Samsung outsold Apple in world smartphone arena Apple may have shipped more smartphones than Samsung in Q4, but the South Korean giant sold more of the gadgets during the year as a whole. So says market watcher Strategy Analytics. Some 488.5m smartphones shipped out of manufacturers' warehouses during 2011, up from 299.5m in 2010. Exactly 19.9 per cent of them shipped with …
This post has been deleted by its author
I would genuinely rather be driving a Nissan. They're practical, economical to run, family-oriented, and you don't look like an over-paid idiot with a self-esteem problem driving one.
But the profit point is the key - Apple's strategy is margins and profits, not volumes (and also mindshare in the media and the top of society). And they're succeeding very well at it.
“Despite intensified competition amid the global economic slowdown, our Telecommunications businesses continued to post solid earnings with an enhanced line-up of high-end smartphones, resulting in higher average selling price (ASP),” said Robert Yi, SVP and Head of Investor Relations at Samsung.
Someone mentioned inflated profit margins?
Xbox obsessing crowd here.
It seems the media is focused on sales rather than product quality. Case in point, the Xbox, easily the worst consumer product of all time, both from a technical point and a reliability one, but the internet bloggers obsess over sales figures every month, NPD this, NPD that.
To be fair, it seems to a trait of American news, but the braindead European news sites are either too dumb or too lazy to bother to edit out the noise.
How many articles can El reg drag out of re-interpreting different figures from different countries & surveys in different manners to tell us that Apple/Samsung/iOS/Android is number 1?
Every other day there are contradictory reports that either iOS or Android is beating the other by looking at specific figures / surveys.
It also depends what you call a smartphone - for instance some would argue a Nokia S40 based candy bar is a 'smart phone' - by a technical definition it probably is but not sure most people would regard it in the same category as an iPhone / Galaxy.
I would like to see sales data for the Galaxy IIs vs iPhone 4 + 4s over the last 12 months - that would probably be more interesting.
The definitions shift all the time, and certainly much of the functionality that marked out smartphones a couple of years can be found in recent S40 phones (the recent Nokia Asha 300, for example). However most current definitions of smartphones revolve around the ability to install significant quantities of third-party apps - in other words to operate as a general-purpose computer. And while S40 does allow that through J2ME, it's much more limited than Android, iOS, Symbian etc. However, if your goal is to be able to surf the net, do your email, catch up on Facebook and Twitter etc - certainly S40 does all this things, and increasingly well.
"Maybe if they kept their attention on the marketplace rather than patent trolling the world they would not have lost the lead."
Apple is one manufacturer - Android is many - so a comparison is not really fair as Android gets put on some very cheap / low end handsets. Comparing 'by value' might be better or directly comparing volumes of competing phones - i.e. iPhone 4/4S vs Galaxy IIs over the previous 6-12 months?
This post has been deleted by its author
OK then, make that 17.84999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999% then.
"Meanwhile, Apple remains the tablet top seller, but Samsung, along with other Android fondleslab purveyors, narrowed the gap during 2011."
As the original article says, Amazon had a larger role in that Samsung.. Question is if the Kindle Fire is an Android device. It's complicated.
Should be fun when Amazon launches their smartphone this year though.
Not sure that the iPhone should be compared to SGSii or GNex. It is a nice enough phone but the specs are probably closer to something like the HTC Desire S.
A quick Amazon check gave me £262 for the HTC Desire S and £485 for the IPhone 4s. I don't know the price the manufacturers sell them to Amazon for, but I expect the price ratio to be roughly the same.
Even allowing for the Apple product having more memory, this is why Apple can report higher profits. They sell a decent mid-range smartphone at a high-end price.
The Desire S has has just one core, has a lower end camera, doesn't have internal storage beyond the first 768mb RAM (thus limiting installed apps) and a lower resolution LCD.
So not really comparable at all to the 4s
Whereas a Samsung Galaxy Sii 16gb has roughly the same internal storage, has a slightly slower less powerful than the 4s, and although a lower resolution screen, a much larger one...
More comparable to to a 4s....
PRice of the GIIs 16gb unlocked on amazon, £408
Price of the 4s on Amazon, £485. That's just £77 difference, and after all one is a fairly long in the tooth phone and the other has just been released a couple of months ago.
Incidentally the G Nexus is £466 on Amazon, so even closer to the 4s in price.
Journalists, when comparing statistics of marketshare of smartphones (and tablets) and trying to belittle Apple with headlines such as this "Samsung outsold Apple" should bear in mind the following when referring to statistics..
1) Apple are only in the "luxury" smartphone/tablet market ie prices over $400.
2) For IOS gadgets Apple is the only manufacturer wheras Android gadgets are produced by many manufacturers.
Its like producing an article sayng "General Motors outsold Mercedes" . A journalist would never dream of writing such a headline since its an obvious unfair comparison. Journalists are wise enough to know that for a relevant statistic they should only compare Mercedes sales to other General Motors models in the more expensive "luxury" car market.
Therefore, why do journalists feel they can get away with such nonsense statististcs when talking about Apple vs Samsung and IOs vs Android? Journalists when talking about Apple smartphones/tablets sales should only use market share statistics to compare them to other expensive smartphones and tablets produced by other manufacturers in order to compare Apple with other apples.
I bet then that the statistics would show that in the "luxury/expensive" smartphone and tablet market the Apple share compared to Samsung and other androids is really around 90%?
EDITORS - please stop journalists abusing the statistics in order to create sensationalist headlines. Thank you.
.
Basically, what you're saying is what the apple users have been accused of for some time - that apple buyers are idiots with more money than sense!
I love how fanbois rationalize their choices, now the market has better, nicer, more powerful choices! I would never make a choice of a product because it is more expensive than equivalent ones, but if that is how you want to define fanbois, so be it!
Has anybody else noticed that the fanbois are proud of the fact that the iPad outsells the opposition. They certainly like to brag about it. Tell them that Samsung phones outsell Apple phones however and they claim that this is only because the iPhone is a big ticket quality item and the Samsung is popular because it's tat. Does this mean therefore that the iPad must be tat too?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
