In the past week, I've been confronted with statistics which just didn't seem to add up. Firstly on Twitter, Ewan MacLeod retweeted (original Tweet by Ken Shimada) this message:
http://twitter.com/kei_shimada/status/24344277211
I was surprised by this. We all know that iPhone and Android sell well, but they're not the only players, and frankly I don't believe that RIM and Nokia each only sell such a small amount as to be negligible in the stats. I replied with:on iPhone: BCN reports that 22.6% of July mobile handset sales were Smartphones. 80% of them were iOS based, and the remaining were Android.
@kei_shimada @ew4n There were no BlackBerry sales? My Mobile magazine keeps telling me that BB Bold and Curve top contract listsThis is true. I get Mobile Magazine through the post every fortnight. Each issue contains a breakdown of UK retails sales for the previous week, both prepay and postpay. Postpay top ten is always dominated by RIM, and they often feature in Prepay. Prepay is dominated by cheap Nokias. I've never seen Apple on this list, not once. Actually, I don't necessarily read every issue, but I have still never seen Apple in the UK top ten retailing handsets, and it isn't even as if their sales are divided across a wide range of phones. I know that this is UK only data, but what I've heard anecdotally is that Apple sells lots of phones, but they're still not on the list. There is some back and forth between Ewan and myself, and then I get a reply from Ken.
@rival @ew4n these are Japanese stats.OK, so now we're getting somewhere. There are two problems becoming clearer to me. Firstly, that Twitter encourages us to just write down the bare bones of what we want to say. We don't have the space to write a lot of qualification for statistics. Secondly that people will easily bend stats without explanation. Ken followed this up with:
@rival @ew4n read carefully, nobody said market share.No, nobody did say market share, but the did start talking about shipping numbers. Now that I know I'm not comparing worldwide sales and UK sales, it starts to make more sense.
@rival @ew4n not all stats are bullshit if you understand what they mean :-)That is my point. Stats are obviously not bullshit if we understand what they mean, the problem is that stats are being banded about without any qualification. Without even mentioning which market the stats we're for. Without any visibility of the underlying data allowing independent analysis. Stats like this are bullshit. They don't aid anyone in understanding a market, they are distortions of the truth.
Nokia’s stock has been hammered by its failure to gain real traction in the high-end segment. Its US listed shares have tumbled to just under $10 a share as of Wednesday morning trading— from an all-time high of more than $60 back in June 2000. Furthermore, although Nokia proudly waves the number “260,000,” the number of Nokia smartphones sold per day according to the company, the figure distorts reality.
Nokia is scrambling to defend its market share. On the high-end it’s dwarfed by RIM, Google and Apple in the United States— Symbian only captured 2% of the smartphone market in the first quarter, according to Nielsen.
Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)
Company | 1Q10 Units | 1Q10 Market Share (%) | 1Q09 Units | 1Q09 Market Share (%) |
Symbian | 24,069.8 | 44.3 | 17,825.3 | 48.8 |
Research In Motion | 10,552.6 | 19.4 | 7,533.6 | 20.6 |
iPhone OS | 8,359.7 | 15.4 | 3,848.1 | 10.5 |
Android | 5,214.7 | 9.6 | 575.3 | 1.6 |
Microsoft Windows Mobile | 3,706.0 | 6.8 | 3,738.7 | 10.2 |
Linux | 1,993.9 | 3.7 | 2,540.5 | 7.0 |
Other OSs | 404.8 | 0.7 | 445.9 | 1.2 |
Total | 54,301.4 | 100.0 | 36,507.4 | 100.0 |
on iPhone: BCN reports that 22.6% of July mobile handset sales were Smartphones. 80% of them were iOS based, and the remaining were Android
Furthermore, although Nokia proudly waves the number “260,000,” the number of Nokia smartphones sold per day according to the company, the figure distorts reality.
Nokia is scrambling to defend its market share. On the high-end it’s dwarfed by RIM, Google and Apple in the United States— Symbian only captured 2% of the smartphone market in the first quarter, according to Nielsen.
Nokia is with world's leading manufacturer, selling 260,000 smartphones worldwide each day.