Apple Shipped 2.5 Million iPhones in China in March, Rebounding Slightly From February Slump

A doubling of the pre-60%-slump figure (1.25M) is a slight rebound?

If Apple keep making money in these F'ed times they better be giving back in a big way. If people keep dying they inadvertently wont have customers.

Yet that exact opposite rationale is often set forth on here when competitors cite shipment data. As though there are warehouses full of unsold Galaxy phones.

From shipping 500k to shipping 2.5 million is still a 4x increase. Stores don’t submit orders and reorders if they’re not selling product. No one wants to sit on inventory.

Yet that exact opposite rationale is often set forth on here when competitors cite shipment data. As though there are warehouses full of unsold Galaxy phones.

The issue here is that different vendors interpret and report shipment data differently.

For Apple, units shipped equate units actually sold (or at least very close to it). This works because Apple tends to have more insight into their sales volume, thanks to their Apple stores and stronger relationship with retailers. Not to mention Apple controls the underlying OS, so they will know when a new device has been activated (implying it has been sold).

For Samsung, they are strong at distribution, in that they are able to quickly push out a new product to many countries in short order. However, the problem is that they often have little clue on how many of their smartphones have been bought by consumers, because they are reliant on mobile carriers for sales data.

We see this in the way Samsung kept revising their sales number of galaxy folds downwards, from 1 million, to 400-500 thousand, and I am betting the final number is probably less than 200 thousand. The reason for this is simple - Samsung simply has no idea.

So Samsung knows very well how many phones they have produced (why wouldn’t they), which equates to number shipped, but not so much about how many phones have actually been purchased by consumers. For all we know, they really could be sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

That’s the difference. The lack of a common standard when it comes to reporting units shipped. For Apple, units shipped - units sold. For Samsung, not necessarily.

These companies care Zero about anyone who posts here so why some have some kind of bizarre need to defend multi billion dollar companies...is beyond weird.

My rationale is very simple.

Right is right, even if it means I am speaking up in favour of a soulless, faceless company or somebody that I don’t like.

Wrong is wrong, even if the subject in question is my good friend.

I speak up for Apple (most of the time) not because I have some uncontrollable urge to defend a trillion-dollar company or that I am in their pocket (I can only say ‘I wish’), but because I simply feel that their arguments don’t hold water.

If your friend or family member were to share a piece of fake news via WhatsApp or try to perpetuate an erroneous piece of information (like using toothpaste to soothe a burn), you would point that out. I am just doing the same when it comes to any discussion here on Apple. Arguments are made, I happen to not agree with them based on my own understanding of how Apple works, and so I speak up.

From shipping 500k to shipping 2.5 million is still a 4x increase. Stores don’t submit orders and reorders if they’re not selling product. No one wants to sit on dead inventory.

Exactly.

I love it when people think Apple just blindly ships products to stores but the stores are unable to sell them to consumers. It's as if an iPhone will sit on a shelf for months at a time.

I guess people think that iPhones end up like all those E.T. cartridges buried in the desert ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial').

:p

Yet that exact opposite rationale is often set forth on here when competitors cite shipment data. As though there are warehouses full of unsold Galaxy phones.

I can’t speak for other posters or any particular competitor’s practices, though some companies have been known to stuff the channel (with product that later gets rebated after being sold in “two-fer” deals).

But I haven’t seen anyone arguing about overstated android shipments for years. I do have hundreds of trolls blocked though, so I might’ve missed those posts. Feel free to link them and I’ll comment.