Apple vs. Samsung: Who sells more phones?
NEW YORK
–
Smartphones are the hottest gadgets in the world. But who's the biggest smartphone maker? We don't really know.
Samsung, Apple's chief competitor, gives
only vague indications of how many it makes, which means industry
watchers come up with widely diverging estimates. Apple Inc. reports its
iPhone sales down to the thousands. In the January to March period, it
shipped 35,064,000. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. may have sold
32 million, 37.5 million or 44.5 million, depending which analyst you
believe. The company itself refuses to say.
What's
at stake, of course, are bragging rights. More accurate sales figures
from Samsung would also be useful to competitors and to partners like
wireless carriers and retailers.
When it
reported first-quarter results Friday morning, Samsung said only that
overall phone shipments (including "dumb" phones) were down more than
10% from the fourth quarter, and that smartphone sales were about the
same percentage of the company's overall sales as they have been before.
The
problem is that Samsung hasn't reported any hard sales figures in a
long time, so analysts are applying these vague hints to their own
estimates, which in turn are based on vague hints from previous
quarters.
There's even a debate about what
Samsung's few guideposts really mean. Jan Dawson, an analyst at Ovum,
says the analyst community is split over the interpretation of Samsung's
reported "300%" increase in smartphone sales in the third quarter of
2011, over the third quarter of 2010. A 300% increase means a
quadrupling, but did Samsung really mean that? Or did sales triple, and
they made the common mistake of calling that a "300% increase?"
The
two schools of thought account for some of the widely diverging
estimates, Dawson believes. Analysts and reporters haven't been able to
get Samsung to clarify the issue.
Wayne Lam,
an analyst with IHS iSuppli, likens the process of estimating Samsung
sales to "using compasses instead of GPS." His estimate for
first-quarter smartphone sales is 32 million, which would put Samsung
behind Apple.
IDC Corp., a research firm that
tracks phone sales, postponed the release of its quarterly phone sales
ranking. It was originally scheduled for just after Samsung's report,
but analyst Ramon Llamas said "additional insight" was needed.
Analysts
agree that in terms of overall phone sales, including non-smart ones,
Samsung outdid long-time No. 1 Nokia Corp. in the first quarter. But
they differ on the margin of victory. Finland's Nokia said it sold 82.7
million phones. ABI Research's Michael Morgan puts Samsung at 83.4
million, only just ahead. Strategy Analytics has it at 93.5 million.
The estimates differ by 10.1 million phones, roughly enough for all the adults in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Samsung
is not alone in espousing vagueness. Taiwan-based smartphone maker HTC
Corp. recently stopped reporting how many phones it makes, possibly
because its sales are in decline.
"The bottom
line is Samsung and Apple are definitely consolidating at the top," Lam
said. "The lead will trade back and forth a bit."
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