"Market Share"

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Eric Slivka:

According to IDC, Samsung remains the number two tablet manufacturer behind Apple, but despite strong 117.6% year-over-year shipment growth still saw its tablets outsold by the iPad by a margin of 7-to-1.

Say it with me now, "Shipments mean nothing". I could not possibly care less how many Galaxy Tabs Best Buy purchased last quarter. How many of those ever made it off the shelf and out of the box? Apple is selling all those iPads... can the same be said for whatever else is being made? When I go to Best Buy there must be 25 tablets on display. No one ever uses them. But the iPad display is crowded every time I go there. I'd like, just once, to see "Market Share" numbers that reflect actual in-the-hands-of-end-users market share. Just once.

Mobile Browser Usage

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AppleInsider reporting that iOS is responsible:

The 65.27 percent share of Apple's iOS platform, which is found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, was up from 62.65 percent in May. Apple's share has steadily risen, growing from a 53 percent position in August of 2011.

Apple's next closest competitor in mobile browsing market is Google's Android platform, which took 19.73 percent in the month of June. Android has also seen its share grow since last August, when it took 15.98 percent of mobile browsers.

Okay, so what? Filter that stat through the lens of this stat and it becomes much more impressive (Joel Mathis, reporting for Macworld):

ComScore’s report, released this week, was based on a survey of 30,000 smartphone subscribers. The company reported that Apple’s iOS platform ranked second to Google’s Android platform—31.9 percent to 50.0 percent, though Apple’s 1.7 percent growth in share from February to May doubled Google’s gain during that time.

Galaxy Tab is Third

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Jordan Crook on tablet market share:

Meanwhile, Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet took the third and fourth spots, with 8 percent and 7 percent shares respectively.

I don't know about the Nook, but I've never seen one in the wild. And though I have never seen a Galaxy Tab in anyone's hand or known anyone who uses one I have seen dozens of them posted to Craigslist in the last few weeks. Every electronics retails in BC is giving away Galaxy Tabs. I guess they're selling really well?

Sell-in vs Sell-out

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Strategy Analytics is trying really hard to make it appear as though Android tablets are hot on Apple's heels with their latest reality-twisting numbers. Neil Mawston conjures:

Android captured a record 39 percent share of global tablet shipments in Q4 2011, rising from 29 percent a year earlier. Global Android tablet shipments tripled annually to 10.5 million units. Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes. Android is so far proving relatively popular with tablet manufacturers

Are you kidding me? Android-powered tablets (note Amazon and it's barely-Android fourth cousin listed among them) shipped 10.5M units in Q4'11? Apple SOLD, to customers, 15+M units this quarter! Robin Wauters of TechCruch adds:

[These Android tablet shipment numbers] refer to ‘sell-in’ and not over-the-counter sales—an important difference, those Android tabs could sit on the shelves forever at Best Buy and never be bought.

An all-important difference indeed!

(via BusinessWire)