IDC retroactively discovers ten million tablets sold in the year ago quarter
More bad new for Apple's iPad "market share" numbers: IDC is now reporting that last year, there were ten million non-Apple tablets it failed to count in its original estimates, retroactively lowering Apple's share of what appears to be a really difficult market to tabulate.
In a move that sounds suspiciously similar to Strategy Analytics' invention of millions of non-iPad tablets, IDC has restated third quarter tablet shipment estimates for the year ago quarter.
The research firm not only "found" more than ten million units it could only attribute to "others," but also dramatically lowered its previously stated shipments for Samsung and Asus by more than a million devices in a single quarter.
IDC's "preliminary" shipment estimate numbers for Q3 2012 (below top) originally assigned Apple a 50.4 percent share of the market, but after the recount, the firm now says that iPads had just a 40.2 percent share of global sales last year, despite the runaway success of Apple's product that no other vendor has been able to successfully challenge.
Apple hasn't restated its sales figures or profits, so IDC's dramatically shifting "market share" numbers are based entirely on the firm's own estimates of everyone else, none of which regularly report actual sales numbers or even shipment estimates.
Apple's retroactive, overnight loss of ten percentage points of market share last year (as tabulated by IDC) appears to make the whole business of creating market share numbers for "tablet shipments" completely irrelevant to reality and wholly without any notion of accountability or legitimacy.
That number also allowed IDC to report 325 percent year-over-year growth for Samsung last year. This year, Samsung's Q3 2013 tablets shipments were retroactively lowered to 4.3 million, causing its 18.4 percent share to drop to 12.4 percent.
Last year, IDC's Ryan Reith stated that Samsung "offers a wide range of tablet offerings across multiple screen sizes and colors, and that clearly resonated with more buyers this quarter. Its growth to 18.4% of worldwide market share during the quarter represents the first time a competitor has attained this level of share since the original launch of the iPad."
In light of IDC's new lower numbers however, that's no longer true. However, IDC's retroactive restating of numbers didn't also retract the favorable comments Reith, the program manager of the IDC's Mobile Device Trackers, had previously made about Samsung's tablet business.
Instead, Samsung's missing six percentage points of share from one year ago join the ten points taken from Apple, and both are applied to "other," retroactively ballooning the group of generic "white box" tablet makers from a 12.2 percent minor and shrinking segment of the market last year into a block that, according to the revised story, shipped more than one third of the market's units last year.
IDC's shift in accounting turns its own market data on "other" White Box tablets upside down, meaning that contrary to what IDC reported last year, the "other" category was actually growing by nearly 3x rather than shrinking by 38 percent, and rather than being on par with Asus or Amazon by shipping around 3 million units, it was really nearly as large as Apple.
IDC's estimate for Samsung's Q3 2013 shipments is 9.7 million, which when contrasted to the new lower estimate from last year, turns in a spectacular growth of 123 percent. At the same time, the "rate of growth" IDC reports for Samsung is falling precipitously.
IDC made no mention of Samsung's collapsing growth rate compared to the previous year, despite the fact that both numbers were inflated by IDC's shifting figures. Instead, it just appears that Samsung's market share is growing dramatically, because its being compared to deflated new lower numbers in the past.
However, Mainelli added, "these low cost Android-based products make tablets available to a wider market of consumers, which is good. However, many use cheap parts and non Google-approved versions of Android that can result in an unsatisfactory customer experience, limited usage, and very little engagement with the ecosystem.
"Android's growth in tablets has been stunning to watch, but shipments alone won't guarantee long-term success. For that you need a sustainable hardware business model, a healthy ecosystem for developers, and happy end users."
In a move that sounds suspiciously similar to Strategy Analytics' invention of millions of non-iPad tablets, IDC has restated third quarter tablet shipment estimates for the year ago quarter.
The research firm not only "found" more than ten million units it could only attribute to "others," but also dramatically lowered its previously stated shipments for Samsung and Asus by more than a million devices in a single quarter.
Market share seems to have nothing to do with reality
The end result is that Apple, despite being the only tablet maker globally to ship double digit millions of devices each quarter, and by far the most profitable tablet maker in a sea of vendors, many of whom are actually losing money, is now portrayed as having had less of a "share" of the "market" than IDC previously reported.IDC's "preliminary" shipment estimate numbers for Q3 2012 (below top) originally assigned Apple a 50.4 percent share of the market, but after the recount, the firm now says that iPads had just a 40.2 percent share of global sales last year, despite the runaway success of Apple's product that no other vendor has been able to successfully challenge.
Apple hasn't restated its sales figures or profits, so IDC's dramatically shifting "market share" numbers are based entirely on the firm's own estimates of everyone else, none of which regularly report actual sales numbers or even shipment estimates.
Apple's retroactive, overnight loss of ten percentage points of market share last year (as tabulated by IDC) appears to make the whole business of creating market share numbers for "tablet shipments" completely irrelevant to reality and wholly without any notion of accountability or legitimacy.
Samsung's secret implosion of tablet growth
Second place Samsung was originally reported by IDC to have sold 5.1 million tablets in Q3 2012, giving it an 18.4 percent share of estimated shipments (but not profits or even actual sales, and certainly not tablet usage, media sales, ecosystem support or third party developer attention).That number also allowed IDC to report 325 percent year-over-year growth for Samsung last year. This year, Samsung's Q3 2013 tablets shipments were retroactively lowered to 4.3 million, causing its 18.4 percent share to drop to 12.4 percent.
Last year, IDC's Ryan Reith stated that Samsung "offers a wide range of tablet offerings across multiple screen sizes and colors, and that clearly resonated with more buyers this quarter. Its growth to 18.4% of worldwide market share during the quarter represents the first time a competitor has attained this level of share since the original launch of the iPad."
In light of IDC's new lower numbers however, that's no longer true. However, IDC's retroactive restating of numbers didn't also retract the favorable comments Reith, the program manager of the IDC's Mobile Device Trackers, had previously made about Samsung's tablet business.
Instead, Samsung's missing six percentage points of share from one year ago join the ten points taken from Apple, and both are applied to "other," retroactively ballooning the group of generic "white box" tablet makers from a 12.2 percent minor and shrinking segment of the market last year into a block that, according to the revised story, shipped more than one third of the market's units last year.
IDC's shift in accounting turns its own market data on "other" White Box tablets upside down
IDC's shift in accounting turns its own market data on "other" White Box tablets upside down, meaning that contrary to what IDC reported last year, the "other" category was actually growing by nearly 3x rather than shrinking by 38 percent, and rather than being on par with Asus or Amazon by shipping around 3 million units, it was really nearly as large as Apple.
IDC's estimate for Samsung's Q3 2013 shipments is 9.7 million, which when contrasted to the new lower estimate from last year, turns in a spectacular growth of 123 percent. At the same time, the "rate of growth" IDC reports for Samsung is falling precipitously.
IDC made no mention of Samsung's collapsing growth rate compared to the previous year, despite the fact that both numbers were inflated by IDC's shifting figures. Instead, it just appears that Samsung's market share is growing dramatically, because its being compared to deflated new lower numbers in the past.
And now, a warning
In IDC's latest report, Tom Mainelli, the firm's Research Director of Tablets noted that "white box tablet shipments continue to constitute a fairly large percentage of the Android devices shipped into the market," more than one third, according to IDC's numbers.However, Mainelli added, "these low cost Android-based products make tablets available to a wider market of consumers, which is good. However, many use cheap parts and non Google-approved versions of Android that can result in an unsatisfactory customer experience, limited usage, and very little engagement with the ecosystem.
"Android's growth in tablets has been stunning to watch, but shipments alone won't guarantee long-term success. For that you need a sustainable hardware business model, a healthy ecosystem for developers, and happy end users."
Comments
You can't even change the number of icons!
Please. Mods. Come on. Ban this… thing. Not even a person.
[post]
Please. Mods. Come on. Ban this… thing. Not even a person.
Indeed, it's probably one of the millions of Samsung's paid bloggers.
That's right, Apple is DOOMED!!! Now where do I sign up for a cut of Samsung's marketing budget?
Derps
Troll alert!
Pretty easy to see that Apple coasting with iOS. Zero innovation in the past 3 years.
You can't even change the number of icons!
Rule #1 for trolling is to try to make some fucking sense, as I'm clueless as to what "change the # of icons" even means.
Oh, and for those asking why spammers and trolls do not get banned, its clear that the mods don't give a shit. Even if they spent 5 min every few days skimming a couple threads it would be clear who needs to be banned, the same handful of blatant trolls have managed to rack up a decent post count posting absolutely nothing but spam like this. Not to mention that this particular poster has a username that is so despicably, disrespectful of the dead. Yeah, no doubt he has something meaningful to contribute.
You could change the number of icons since 2008.
Where exactly are all these tablets? I'm always on the lookout for which tablets people are using in the subway and coffee shops in NYC and iPads are at least 9 out of 10, maybe higher.
Here's an idea. **** off and go hang out in an Android forum. Everyone here is sick of your stupid drivel. Grow up dude.
That's a 10-fold drop.
Where exactly are all these tablets? I'm always on the lookout for which tablets people are using in the subway and coffee shops in NYC and iPads are at least 9 out of 10, maybe higher.
These are all of the no name $30 to $80 dollar tablets that don't connect to google play or any ecosystem on the planet. There a conglomeration of cheap landfill junk that any respectable survey firm would completely ignore. 3 months to 6 months after purchase because of the use of the cheapest parts they can find to construct them, 90% of them die and are thrown away. If it was not so sad that IDC and Stratgey Analytics had to quote these numbers, of tablets (no name white box tablets) that can barely display a web page, and are so low powered as to be laughable for any use other than being a paper weight, there whole surveys would be the laughing stock and should be the laughing stock of the survey world.
These tablets are not even in the same galaxy when compared to the iPad.
I agree with the sentiment above that we should just disregard any article that starts with IDC Says, Or A Strategy Analytics survey says and file it in the garbage where it belongs.
In China and the rest of the developing world, the Android open source project is used for anything with a display. It's a free modern OS, so it sees a lot of applications. I think IDC is counting all these devices as tablets. The way they're shuffling numbers around makes it look like they have some sort of proxy for estimating the total number of Android devices sold, then they divide those up into smartphones and tablets, and then divide those up into different brands. So the realised they'd overestimated Samsung's slice of the pie and simply gave those sales to "other". Meanwhile, poor Apple only gets its official sales counted.
blah, blah, blah
How come my Galaxy S4 still has a yellow daisy as the icon for it's image gallery?
So 2007, so boring, such a lack of innovation since it was copied from Apple in 2010, predictable and bland.
Samsung sucks.
Pretty easy to see that Apple coasting with iOS. Zero innovation in the past 3 years.
You can't even change the number of icons!
Samsung Trollbot