The Samsung Q2 2011 Mystery: Mobile Device Sales and Smartphone Sales Ranking ...
Samsung's Q2 Earnings presentation slides are here ...
c2499022.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com
How many Samsung handsets were sold into channels in Q2 and how many Android, Widows 7 and Bada smartphones?
Who knows? Samsung knows but they are in stealth mode and they aint tellin'.
Strategy Analytics (SA) saw total handset market unit sell-in at 361.1 million units in Q2 while IDC saw it at 365.4 million units. Typically IDC and Strategy Analytics (SA) will show identical figures for Samsung's total unit handset sell-in in any given quarter although estimated share will usually vary based on how they size the total market. Not so this quarter and this is how the two agencies show unit sell-in and share for Samsung and Nokia in Q2 with SA crediting Samsung with 2.8 million more handset units shipped and billed than IDC credits ...
Strategy Analytics ¦¦ IDC
Units Share ¦¦ Units Share
======= ======= ¦¦ ======= =======
Nokia 88.5m 24.5% ¦¦ 88.5m 24.2%
Samsung 70.2m 19.2% ¦¦ 74.0m 19.2%
In addition SA estimates that Samsung sold-in 19.2 million smartphones in the quarter (17.5% of 110 million global smartphone units sold-in) v. Nokia's reported 16.7 million (15.2%) or Apple's 18.5% (20.3 million reported).
In actuality Samsung hasn't broken out feature phones from smartphones, or smartphones from tablets. Maybe they overtook Nokia (who was passed by Apple) for the number 2 slot in smartphone unit sales, but maybe not. Their mobile device revenue sales were 11.69 trillion Won ($10.84 billion USD) and their Telecom division had a healthy 1.67 Trillion Won ($1.16 billion USD) operating profit (13.7% op margin) for the combination oh infrastructure, feature & smartphones, and tablets ...
... but Samsung has said that it would stop reporting phone sales and forecasts for its mobile phones and tablets and The Wall Street Journal states this is “probably due to its continuing legal battle with Apple”, OTOH, Unwired View's Lithuanian founder (Staska) figures it's because "Samsung wants everyone to think that they have now passed Nokia in smartphones, and they are already #2 in smartphone market, but the real numbers are not good enough." He could be correct and he provides some math to back up that statement (see below).
>> Samsung Q2, 2011: no more then 15.65M smartphones shipped. It’s still #3, behind Apple and Nokia
Stasys Bielinis (Staska)
Unwired View
29 July, 2011
Ok. That was totally unexpected.
As the earnings season comes to a close, with Samsung’s Q2 earnings report today, we were supposed to have the final data point to see who was the top dog in smartphones in Q2 2011. And we sort of got it.
It’s Apple with 20.34 million iPhones shipped.
What was really unexpected – it’s who may have come in second. It’s Nokia, with 16.7 million smartphones.
As Nokia smartphone shipments crashed this year, with the onslaught of Android phones like Galaxy S, everyone was expecting them to lose smartphone rankings top spot to both Apple, and Samsung. Some where even predicting that Samsung will beat Apple in smartphone shipment volumes today. But that does not seam to have happened.
Samsung has just reported their Q2 results. And instead of crowing about beating Nokia in smartphone game, or even becoming #1 smartphone maker in the world, Sammy failed to give even a hint about how many smartphones it shipped during the last 3 months. That’s pretty strange, so let’s try to dig a bit deeper, to get at least a plausible estimate of Samsung smartphone sales in Q2 2010.
Samsung has shipped 70 million mobile devices in Q1 2011, 18% of which were smartphones and tablets – that’s 12.6M smart devices and 57.4M feature phones. Today they have reported that their mobile device shipments grew 10% compared to Q2 2010. In the second quarter last year, Samsung has shipped 63.8 million mobile handsets. Add 10% to that, and you get 70.18 million of mobile devices shipped in Q2 2011.
Samsung also said today, that their feature phone shipments decreased slightly compared to Q1 2010. I’m not sure what “slightly” really means – but I will assume that it’s no more then 5%. Samsung is a public company, after all, and they have to be pretty careful about what they say to the public.
So if Samsung feature phone sales declined 5% from 57.4 million they shipped Q1, that will give us 54.53M feature phones shipped in Q2. Which leaves us with no more then a total of 15.65 million of Samsung smartphones and tablets shipped in the second quarter of this year.
That’s a very impressive 24% growth in a single quarter. But still far shy of 18-21 million some analysts were expecting. And, if my assumptions are valid, Samsung’s smartphone shipments are lower then Nokia’s 16.7 million.
Which means that Nokia is still holding #2 spot in smartphone rankings, and Samsung is still #3.
Is that why Samsung was so quiet about it’s smartphone business today?
Update: Upon closer look, it seems that Samsung says that it’s handset YoY sales grew not 10%, but in high 10%, which could mean anything between 15% to 19%, and it’s QoQ growth is in high single digits – again, anywhere between 5-9%. Which gives us Samsung Q2 handset sales range between 73.4 and 76 mil.
On the other hand – since Samsung is explicit on telling us about single digit increases/decreases, and then says that feature phone sales decreased slightly – I believe the actual decrease is less the 1%, which will mean 56.8 to 57.3 feature phones sold this year. So in worst case scenario – Samsung shipped 16.1 million smartphones and tablets, in best case 19.2 million.
With a non-guidance from Samsung on smartphone and even handset unit sales, it’s hard to be sure 100% about the final outcome. Depending on how many tablets it had shipped, and how the final numbers plaid out, there is a good chance that Samsung has passed Nokia in Q2 for a number 2 slot.
But the more I look at a way Samsung has reported data, the more I’m convinced that they still haven’t passed Nokia in actual smartphone shipments, and are still #3.
I checked Samsung quarterly reports as far as two years back, and in every one of those reports, Samsung has disclosed an exact number of handsets shipped in that quarter. Starting from Q3 2010, Samsung has broken down these handset shipment numbers into percentages – smartphones/total. Making it extremely easy for anyone to calculate exactly how much smartphones Samsung shipped in that quarter. As I did with Q1 2011 numbers above.
And suddenly, this quarter, Samsung goes all fuzzy on us. With high 10%, low single digits, slight declines and what not. Why would they do that? Why obfuscate the numbers which are clearly very good?
Probably because Samsung wants everyone to think that they have now passed Nokia in smartphones, and they are already #2 in smartphone market. But the real numbers are not good enough, they have not shipped more then 16.7 million smartphones this quarter. So they obfuscate numbers just enough, to allow analysts to to come to their own, wrong, conclusions and declare that Samsung is #2.
A masterful PR move by Samsung! ###
Some related Links:
• IDC on Q2 Handset Sell-In:
idc.com
• Strategy Analytics on Q2 Handset Sell-In:
ow.89.sl.pt
• Strategy Analytics on Smartphone Sales
ow.8m.sl.pt
- Eric - |
