That is why I posted the older link. If they have been off for years why should we believe they are on now?
I'm going to need help interpretting the links you provided. I see nothing there that discredits Gartner or IDC.
1) The first link merely expresses indignation that either agency would have the gall to estimate unit sales or shipments with the precision of hundreds of units even in the cases where OEMs are not revealing them.
tech.fortune.cnn.com
2) In that article, Elmer-Dewitt links to his own article comparing IDC's estimated global sales of Samsung tablets with Samsung's US shipments, which were in disagreement. Those 2 numbers don't have to be equal, and in fact, we know they are not the same. Why? Samsung told us they shipped 2 million Tabs in 4Q2010, yet the court doc indicates they shipped 250K into the US during that quarter. So what?
tech.fortune.cnn.com
These are not verifiable discrepancies. I believe that the only legit metrics of sell through we ever have are Apple's reported shipments (minus their reported change in channel inventory) and Google's activation numbers, which have been consistent with Gartner's reports, both now and historically. No other companies gives us reported numbers to compare with, at least on the smartphone side (Asus still reports tablet shipments).
Even if you quibble with the methodology or the actual numbers, what is it that you have a problem with? Do you not believe that Google is activating 120 million Android devices a quarter as of Sept 2012, like Google says? The general trend is hard to miss no matter the methodology -- Android is gobbling share like nobody's business. On the tablet side, it's less forboding, but even Tim Cook said yesterday he expects to lose share.
Whether unit share is important is a different question. |
