Both Strategy Analyticsand IHS iSuppli are reporting that Apple lead the worldwide sales of smartphones in quarter 4 of 2011. We beg to differ.
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Samsung have reported their quarter 4 results but apparently don’t disclose their unit sales of smartphones . Analysts have assessed these as being 36.5 million in the quarter. Both iSuppli and Strategy Analytics reports are expressed in millions but the latter includes a decimal place. They report Samsung’s as 36 million and 36.5 million
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respectively.
Apple’s quarter 1 2012 results as we mentioned yesterday cover a 14 week period from 26 September to 31 December. So compared to the calendar quarter they have an extra 5 days ie 26-30 September inclusive.
The iPhone 4s (undoubtedly a heavy driver of sales in Q4) was announced on 4 October. So in seeking to make any adjustment to Apples calendar quarter 4 volumes of 37.044 million we believe it would be not unreasonable to base this on the previous quarters unit sales of 17.073 million (pro rata 187,615 per day). Five days therefore would account for 938,000 units. So their adjusted quarter 4 unit sales would become 36.106 million.
So this is just greater than IHS iSuppli’s figure of 36 million but 0.4 million less than Strategy Analytics.
On balance we reckon this is “too close to call” and therefore declare a draw with them both sharing the top spot!
Whilst looking at these numbers we came up with what we think is a rather nice statistic.
During the last quarter of the year Apple were selling over FOUR iPhones a SECOND!
