Even RIM outsold declining Iphone. What I find funny is that if look at the coverage in the media it's all about the iphone! Android is for poor people and RIM can't even give their handsets away for free if you believe what your read...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... ne-growth#

Hmm.. Given some of the dodgy stats that have been flying around recently (based on shipped vs sold for example) I'd really like to see some of the hard numbers myself. Which isn't going to happen as these companies charge hundreds of dollars for full access to the data. The statement also doesn't tie with the mentioned stat that 2/3 of web traffic on mobile phones is identifiably iOS. Either of those stats could be right or wrong but I find it hard to fathom that they're both right at the same time. I'm also rather dubious of the stat that 50% of the active mobile phones in the UK are smartphones. At least, if they are, I suspect a big chunk of them aren't being used for anything other than voice and IM.

It's in the company's interest to put out a sensationalised PR headline piece to get people to spend hard money on the full report. I'm always suspicious of reports that come out with big statements then lock the supporting data behind an expensive paywall. Always smells a bit of bait & switch tbh.

Course if you count all the phones I have at home and for work, I have an iPhone, three android phones (one of which actually isn't), two blackberries and a Windows 7 phone, so I guess I'm not typical .

Jon

Of course not... no one owns a Windows Phone 7 *

*I probably will come renewal time depending on what the current OS state is and app support though

Nevermind Android, Samsung alone managed it despite all the legal wotnots:

http://www.cultofmac.com/124969/samsung ... one-panic/

No. This is exactly what I mean. This is not the number of phones Samsung sold last quarter. This is the number of phones Samsung shipped last quarter. Samsung do not publish data on how many phones they sell. They were caught channel stuffing about six months ago and their response was not to change to using accurate statistics, but to stop publishing the stats people actually care about. Now, answer this question - if I go into a phone shop and ask for a Samsung phone, do you think they'll tell me they are all out of stock or do you think I'll be able to walk out of the shop with a shiny new phone? Checking a few online suppliers doesn't seem to suggest any Samsung phones are out of stock. Yet you can't get a 4S for love nor money (well, maybe you can on eBay for a LOT of money). And it sold (apparently) 4 million units in three days.

I think it's quite possible Samsung did sell more smartphones than Apple in the last quarter. But nobody actually knows. Because Samsung don't tell anyone how many they sold, and Apple don't separate their numbers in the way you can see how many phones (as oppose to 'devices') they sell in a quarter.

In this arena, anyone who tells you they know for a fact Company A sold more phones than Company B is simply illustrating that they are either a fool or a snake-oil salesman. The numbers required to make those statements simply don't exist in the public domain.

Never believe a statistic published by the company itself. They all lie. Every single one of them.

Jon

I thought the stats were based on ownership? The reports I read elsewhere said that around 48% of the population in the UK had a smartphone and just over 50% of those owned an Android device, with htc being the main seller, with Samsung in second place, RIM third and Apple falling from around 30% last year to 18% this year.

Which, I would think, shows that the UK market exploded last year and not necessarily that Apple's sales collapsed.

It also, of course, won't account for those that have upgraded (unless it is actively connected) or those that have more than one phone (I have, for example a Mozart with my company SIM, a Sensation with my private SIM and the iPhone 3GS with no SIM, but still travels with me).

Sorry Dave but that assertion is absolute bottom-gravy. There's no way half the UK population has a smartphone.

There might be 30 million smartphones in the UK but that's not the same thing.

The article I linked is about sales which are more meaningful if you want to see how popular any given platform is. Market share will be a lagging indicator because you might own one platform even when you don't like it that much anymore and you want to buy a new one but can't...

Tbh, a number of analysts estimate that Samsung has indeed shipped/sold more than Apple. Making estimates and analysis is their business so I don't think they would be making things up...

Jesus, then you've got a lot to learn. They make things up all the time. Most analysts you see in the press are very well aware of the fact that they can guess all the time because they can bring people's attention to the ones they get right and everyone forgets the ones they get wrong. Incorrect predictions are tomorrow's fish and chip wrappers as it were.

I haven't got the link to hand, but I read a research piece where a company took the 50 most well known financial analyst's predictions and matched them against sheer chance and the predictions of 10 members of the public picked at random. They scored their predictions for accuracy over the course of a year and ranked them at the end The top 10 places were 4 analysts, 5 members of the public and chance. 45 out of 50 analyst's predictions were worse than just picking stuff at random.

Just as a simple example, go check how many 'expert analysts' were saying they had hard evidence the iPhone 5 was going to be launched just before the 4S actually was.

Even if they didn't make things up, they still wouldn't be 100% accurate. Because they still rely on the data the companies give them and we're back to rule number one - companies lie. Even occasionally when doing so is illegal, because they think (quite correctly, actually) that most of the time nobody will care, or it will simply be too much hassle to prosecute them. And when they don't lie, the data they make public is usually carefully filtered to only include the stats that make them look good.

Seriously. Analysts press statements are accurate? In that case I have some rare moon cheese I'm sure you'd like to invest in.

Jon

I am talking about analystsfirms who run a business based and making analysis (not predictions) and they SELL their reports to companies for MONEY. They won't get away with spinning pointless drivel.

You are talking about "analysts" that are glorified bloggers and columists who wouldn't sell [LIFTED].

An estimate is still a guess, it might be an educated guess, but a guess non the less

A prediction is an estimate, it's a finger in the air value of what is happening/will happen. Unless someone has a time machine I would only really pay attention to physical 3rd party sales reports, which given the talk is about old data should be available at some point soon

Kantar is a reputable company in this business and they also estimate Android outselling iphone by 2:1 and RIM outselling iphones. They reckon 48% of people own a smartphone in the UK.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/android ... -50005889/

I wonder if the 'iPhone 5 launch' isn't a tilt on these figures. World and his wife knew Apple were launching something new this autumn. That's bound to have a depressive effect on sales of current models (there's a name for it, but I forget it). Be interesting to compare the next quarters sales, which would include the 4S.

Jon

That sentence is statistical nonsense.

Which leads me to suspect that the rest of what they say contains a similar quantity of utter tripe.