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image source: MacTrast
BY EVAN THOMAS
ANCHOR CANDICE AVILES
It’s an unintended side effect of Samsung’s court battle with Apple — a rarer, more
detailed look at the sales of the South Korean company.
A recent IDC report estimates Samsung sold 2.4 million tablets last quarter. But of those,
only 37,000 were sold in the U.S. It’s raising eyebrows at CNN.
“While it’s possible that Samsung's overseas sales made up the difference, it's extremely
unlikely. If Samsung really sold 2.4 million tablets last quarter, as IDC estimates, 1.5%
were sold in the U.S. and 98.5% overseas. That's pretty hard to believe.”
GigaOM imagines someone somewhere is counting devices sent to retailers as “sold.”
“But the more likely explanation boils down to the problem with reporting numbers of products
shipped versus sold. Does selling to a retailer count as ‘sold’ if the product sits on
a shelf in a store instead of in the hands of a customer?”
Either way, Boy Genius Report explains, Samsung pulled down $644 million in tablet sales since
2010, which is still a higher-margin business than its phones.
Of course, that can’t stack up to Apple. The Register reports.
“Even taking a comparative timeline for Apple, from the third quarter of 2010 until
the second quarter of 2012, the company sold … 32 million iPads for $17.6bn, kicking
Samsung's sales to the kerb, at least in the US.”
And the handset gap is significant, as well. According to the court filings, Apple has
sold 65.5 million iPhones since 2010. Samsung has cleared 21.2 million.
And its fastest mover isn’t even a flagship. Instead, Gizmodo says, it’s a decidedly
middle-of-the-road prepaid smartphone running a dated version of Android.
“The Galaxy Prevail individually sold 2.25 million phones while the entire Galaxy S II
series (with all its variants) reached 4.1 million of sales in that two year span. It's
no where close to being the best phone that Samsung makes and yet it's easily the most
popular. Crazy.”
So there’s some revelatory info coming to light, giving all of us a better idea of how
these huge companies operate. But All Things D says the only reason we’re getting it
is because both Apple and Samsung want an edge — and this is the only way to get one.
“Lawyers for the companies have been trying to keep as much of this detail out of the
public view as possible, but that battle appears largely lost. The jury will need the numbers,
of course, if it finds infringement by either Samsung or Apple of the other’s patents
in order to determine damages.”
That jury is expected to reach a decision at the end of the summer.