“During its 2014 second fiscal quarter, Apple shocked Wall Street and left critics silent, as Apple sold 43.7 million iPhones. Tech milestones are fleeting, with new records born and broken on a weekly basis, but some accomplishments are bigger than others,” Mark Reschke writes for TGAAP. “One such monumental milestone is a soon-to-be-fact, looming on the horizon — Apple is on the verge of selling 200 million iPhones in a single year.”
“Apple continues to gain market share in the U.S., now at 41.3%,” Reschke writes. “Apple’s growth is surprising given that an assumed pent-up demand was ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy S5, which was announced February 24th. In the face for Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, Apple is likely to lose little, if any, ground to Samsung in the current quarter.”
“Pent-up demand for an iPhone 6 (we believe will be called iPhone Air), is massive, as rumors are pointing towards a 4.7-inch iPhone. Not quite large screen, but no longer a small screen form factor iPhone either. The massive upgrade eligible iPhone install base will be the largest in Apple’s history by this fall,” Reschke writes. “Without Apple entering 5-inch+ Phablet device market, this current quarter (Apple’s fiscal Q3), iPhone is on its way to achieving 200 million iPhone sales by March 2015. In other words, the 200 million iPhone year is here, it’s happening on right now.”
Read more in the full article here.
I’m gonna tell you a secret..
Ape can easily sell
More than that, but it is part of apple marketing strategy to beat records every time, so they are very careful in just selling enough to break sales records but leave room for breaking another record the next year or model.
Is that good.
Yeah, I’ve seen some Apes that could really sell.
Well, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was a surprising success and sold very well. How well an ape can sell a smartphone is another question entirely. 😉
Oh it think that should have been titled “Rise of the Planet of the Apps”
Your comment will be the stupidest comment I will have read today.
🏆 Congratulations!
Troy should have come back with a “damn spell check” comment. Do you think English is his first language?
I rarely comment on people’s writing skills, as I understand how hard it is for people where English is a second language. We all make mistakes, and I’m sure I have in this comment as well.
I his case though, it was the idea of what he was saying combined with a blatant disregard for punctuation that won him the award.
Just saying……that said “Selling or sold” not shipped.
The competition doesn’t dare say those words nor do the chicken scratch writers or anal-ists.
The whole shipped versus sold thing is really overplayed. You can only stuff a channel once, and it will count against you during the following quarter. Give-aways (two-fers or whatever) still have the same impact on the platform; i.e., there are still more units in play.
Unsold inventory can be returned to the OEM/distributor as well.
Right, which is exactly why I wrote, “You can only stuff a channel once, and it will count against you during the following quarter.”
Let’s say Samsung wants to hype the success of the S5, so this quarter, they ship a ton of units that sit in warehouses/stores without being sold. Next quarter, those units that didn’t sell are still in the channel. Samsung can’t just keep stuffing the channel. They could, but unsold units end up hurting them in their financial results (which affect them much more). Even if units are sent back, that comes at the count from not having units shipped out during that same time period.
The only way channel stuffing really comes into play is in terms of falsely reporting initial sales. A company with wide distribution can report millions of shipped units when in fact it would take millions of shipped units simply to stock the stores. However, after that initial report, units have to move to consumers because the channel has already been stuffed.
“Samsung can’t just keep stuffing the channel. They could, but unsold units end up hurting them in their financial results (which affect them much more).”
Exactly my point. They make it difficult on purpose by flooding the market and lumping all their products together then to report “actual” sells. You are correct, Samsung has been getting hit financially when they report but that still doesn’t stop the analyst and writers from writing stories about “market share” or “shipped” units and comparing apples to oranges.
Delayed losses and shipping of new products can easily hide facts. Tell me why the writers don’t focus on their losses instead?
Different metrics for different reasons. Most of which are lost here on MDN with the demographic of “fans” as opposed to who the numbers really mean something to… investors, developers, retailers, carriers, etc..
Samsung doesn’t stuff the channel at the expense of actual financial loss to counter fans here on MDN or anywhere else for that matter.
The shipping as a game to “fix the numbers” is a myth, as I’ve explained, that could work in one quarter, but those responsible for results are likely to be accountable the next quarter and channel stuffing makes things that much harder.
All the people always claiming that it’s shipped numbers instead of sales… ok, what happened to the phones shipped last quarter, and the quarter before that, and the one before that, and… Somewhere at a Best Buy there’s a stock room with half a billion Samsung S4 units.
The phones that get shipped eventually make it into the hands of consumers. If market share is the metric, it doesn’t matter how that happens, whether it’s two-fer promos, early subsidy, rebates, or whatever.
Market share is a different metric altogether from revenue and or profit and both metrics are valuable for different reasons. If you’re a developer and trying to prioritize platform development, it doesn’t matter one bit if Samsung gave away half a billion phones, what matters is how many phones of a platform are going to consumers.
There are many other metrics involved that are of interest for many different reasons but shipped versus sold has very little differentiation. Again, not that there is no difference, just that it’s a myth that a company has much to gain by inflating the shipped numbers one quarter at the expense of the next.
So if you look at the article John posted below, do you still want to stick to your argument?
Yes. See my response.
“All the people always claiming that it’s shipped numbers instead of sales… ok, what happened to the phones shipped last quarter, and the quarter before that, and the one before”
They get shipped back.
You’ve never worked in the retail chain have you? Stores don’t like shipping and receiving just for the fun of it. It’s a fairly significant cost of business. They’re not doing this just to inflate Samsung’s (or anyone else’s) number’s that will be unveiled when their quarterly files are made.
Au contraire.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/04/11/apple-samsung-tablet-misled/
Shipped items is not an audited number nor is it reported on an official document. It is a made up number. They can “ship” what they like. They can bring them back and “ship” them again.
That article doesn’t disprove my point. Samsung (or any other company) can lie about anything. Most lies will come back to bite them as the financial statements that need to be released will reveal the actual numbers.
From the article:
“When Strategy Analytics was telling the world that Samsung sold nearly 2 million Galaxy Tabs in six weeks, the truth was that it took Samsung all of 2011 to sell half that many in the U.S., its single biggest smartphone market.”
My point here is probably too nuanced, but it’s valid nonetheless. Note I never said there was no difference between sales and shipped, in fact I said, “Again, not that there is no difference, just that it’s a myth that a company has much to gain by inflating the shipped numbers one quarter at the expense of the next.”
When a large company releases a new product, it may have a high initial ship number, and that’s nothing to get excited about. However, when that ship number is repeated month after month, it’s no longer channel stuffing and reflects units, not necessarily being sold, but in the hands of consumers.
That ship number could be a lie, but then again, the units sold number could be a lie. Either lie could come back to bite them in when financial statements are released.
From this article, it sounds like Samsung said they shipped 2 million tablets for initial launch and Strategy Analytics reported them as being sold during the 6 weeks. However, you’ll notice they didn’t continue to report 2 million every 6 weeks. They couldn’t, because half of those 2 million remained in stores and warehouses for 6 months. And here we are looking at the fact that they only sold 1 million over the course of 6 months.
Augh! Again my point, Apple reports sales only and Samsung reports shipments only. Yes, the financials will air it all out in the end but wall street, the writers, Gardner and all the rest of the analysts compare sold vs shipped and NOT on the financial facts. Fact: Apple is killing Samsung in profits.
End of story.
Your point is wrong. Samsung doesn’t report shipments only. In fact, the link that you pointed to was the result of a 3rd party misinterpreting comments from a Samsung Vice President. Samsung’s earnings reports show units sold and revenue from that, and completely ignores “shipped”.
“Fact: Apple is killing Samsung in profits.”
Yes it is; what does that have to do with anything?
“Fact: Apple is killing Samsung in profits.
Now I’m confused, Fortune has an article that said iPhone purchases on AT&T were down 26% this year. Some marketing research company looked into it.
Apple’s “portion” of ATT’s total device sales was down 26% from what it was.
No big deal.
I think there are at least 2 factors that may affect sales of iPhone6s. The first being whether or not carriers actually agree to the $100 increase in cost and the second being customers reluctant to upgrade due to not having the ‘usual’ sized iphone in either of the two iPhone6 models. The second may lead to some migrating to another phone ironically to keep the small size they are used to.
And you know Apple’s pricing strategy how?
Oh, it’s most certainly a rounding error 😉
You can only stuff a channel once, huh! Why do you think they have so many similar models and product releases.
Baggier pants better become popular again. I don’t wear tight jeans, but my iphone w/ case is pushing the bounds of what fits comfortably.
Bien por Apple los resultados de un estricta disciplina y una extraordinaria y paradigamática mercadotecnia única en su genero y son los mejores dispositivos del mundo son increibles.
exito siempre
I don’t understand a word of that, but it still made more sense than the first post by ‘Troy’.
granted, it may sell well it may not but it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it a not-very-good-email-machine.
finally, some cracks in the facade, an article that bears out the sell well part. 🙂