Apple's smartphone numbers in perspective

The web has just suffered a collective head rush on the news that Apple has sold 37.04 million iPhones, a doubling of sales from the previous quarter. Spectacular Android destroying stuff!

Or is it really? Let's have a wee look, shall we?

Using Apple's own earning statements for the last 15 months, and beginning with Q4 2010 as a base from which to work, we can put that performance into some perspective. If you get bored with figures and such, you might want to skip to the next bit, but if you're brave enough to follow the bouncing ball, the journey is enlightening.

Sep 2010 Q4 – 14.10 M

Dec 2010 Q1 – 16.24 M – 115.5% (increased)

Mar 2011 Q2 – 18.60 M – 114.5% (increased)

Jun 2011 Q3 – 20.34 M – 109.0% (increased)

Sep 2011 Q4 – 17.07 M – 84.0% (decreased)

Dec 2011 Q1 – 37.04 M – 217% (increased)

For starters, the December quarter contains 92 days, so the daily numbers for the iPhone are the total for the quarter, 37.04 million, divided by the number of days, 92, which comes out at 402,000 sales each day. Bear in mind that this is the best single quarter by far that the iPhone has achieved, yet it's a little more than half the daily rate of Android sales of which more than 700,000 a day were being seen back in October. So it's not unreasonable to speculate that the daily rate is now North of 800,000 which means that the iPhone's most spectacular daily feat was likely still only half of Android's daily effort.

So not much chance of Apple wrenching the crown from Android anytime soon then. Yet with all the static hurtling about the web at present, you'd swear that Apple had achieved some game changing miracle. Don't these people think for even a moment before they unquestioningly parrot the disingenuous utterings of Apple's PR machine? Apparently not. So Apple's share price gets the boost that its shareholders and senior executives so desperately want.

Looking at the figures above, you'll notice that the quarter to quarter figures are all over the place but most noticeably, the Q4 number, instead of increasing, actually decreased. Why was that? Mostly because Apple broke its usual June iPhone release pattern and made the faithful wait another quarter if they wanted the latest and greatest. Which, of course, they did.

So sales in Q4, instead of increasing by a substantial figure, actually dropped and in doing so, created an artificially low base figure for comparison to the following quarter. The net effect of that has been to make the Q1 2012 figures look iFabulous to the iFaithful and those who couldn't be arsed thinking about it for a moment. And that my friends, is many.

It's impossible to know what percentage increase Q4 would have seen had the iP4S been launched at the normal (for Apple) cycle period of Q3, but we can make an educated guess. And to save you the trouble, I've done it for you. I'm kind like that.

I averaged the quarter by quarter increases (though as pointed out earlier, the percentages fluctuate for no apparent reason) as this seems to be the fairest way. So, the average increase is a very healthy 128% increase per quarter.

Applying that to Q3 is as follows: 20.34 x 128% = 26.0 M. A lot more than the 17.07 M reported, eh?

Then applying the same to our new figure for Q3... 26.0 x 128% gives us 33.3 M.

So without the freaky base quarter where buying slowed in anticipation of the Q1 iP4S release, you would have expected around 33.3* million iPhones to have been sold. Apple's newly released figure is of course 37.04, around 3.74 million more than might have been expected. And that, gentle AndroidNZ readers, is just 11.2%. A great deal of hysteria over a rather modest improvement.

Especially as Apple's December quarter is traditionally its best anyway. So the purchase deferral in Q4 had the effect, predicted regularly at the time, of lowering sales a lot with the additional effect of creating an artificially low point of comparison with what was always going to be a huge quarter for the iPhone, the holiday season – this coupled to the pent-up demand certainly made a difference. But was that 11% improvement really as spectacular as the analysts and bloggers seem to believe?

I don't think so.

And just to make the point even clearer, while Apple sold 37 million iPhones, Samsung – just one of the iPhone maker's many Android competitors - sold 36.5 million smartphones on its own, missing Apple's best shot by a minimal half a million units. According to Strategy Analytics, that gives Apple 23.9% of the smartphone market in Q4. So, lopping off a few percent for the RIM, WinPhone, Nokia and Bada folk, that means Android cleaned up, yet again, with around 60%, nearly treble the sales of its major rival.

So all that whoopin' and a'hollerin' by the iFans as they salivate at the notion of iOS taking over as king of the smartphone OSes seems to be just a gnat's premature. Of course we don't have actual figures for the latest quarter from Android as yet, so it's hard to tell precisely how they fared. But based on the foregoing, I doubt it will worry the little green robot much.

And somebody needs to remind the 'Muricans out there that the world is bigger than the US of A, and Apple getting a single quarter of being neck and neck with Android in that particular market during a “perfect storm” of circumstances surely doesn't imply that the balance has changed.

Or does it? It'll be interesting to see the results from the next quarter, n'est pas?

*Disclaimer: I ain't no statistician, so don't yell at me if I busted some protocol or other...

Source: Apple, Samsung & Strategy Analytics