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Three things you can count on -- death, taxes, and record Apple device sales during any conceivable, imaginable period or holiday.
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Everyone knows the months leading up to September are when iPhone sales are lowest.

Looking at these holiday sales is stupid cause Apple just released a new iPhone in September and Samsung is going to release the s8 in Spring.
 
No surprise here. Great job once again Apple.

And inline with Apple's Q1 2017 $76 billion to $78 billion revenue guidance (which is traditionally very conservative) provided in their September 25th Q4 2016 report - where quarterly revenue was $46.9 billion.
 
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All this moaning about Apple - clearly they're doing what everyone wants.

I can picture a meeting room at Apple HQ where these figures are discussed and the conclusion being "thinner, less ports, reduced battery life, more dongles means great sales."
 
I think this year could also be an anomaly with Samsung flaming out (literally!) and nobody else really stepping into their shoes as the #2 contender.
 
I said sale numbers, not sales as in monetary terms.

Apple used to state how many handsets they sold etc but not anymore as far as I am aware.

You must not read the quarterly reports or the news articles on them--Apple has always reported sales numbers and continues to do so, here's a quick example I pulled up from 2015, but they do it every quarter. As a PTC, they are in essence required to.

"Apple was expected to sell 67 million iPhone units during the quarter, which would have been quite the improvement over the 51 million the company sold during the same period a year earlier. Instead, Apple moved 74.5 million of the smartphones during the quarter . . .

Meanwhile, iPad sales slipped about 18% in the first quarter, to 21.4 million units sold after the company released new iterations of its iPad Air and iPad mini tablets. Mac sales increased, slightly, to 5.5 million units sold."
 
"Google's Pixel smartphone, which came out in October, did not make Flurry's list."

Did not make because of the number of activations? Or because they decided to omit it because they didn't want it to affect perception of the Apple vs Samsung numbers? From what I've seen, there seem to be a lot of people around be that have picked up the Pixel.
 
I'd expect Apple to be number one. So good work.

Who uses flurry though? It would be nice to know what the source of this info is. And relative percentage mean very little. This is a very poor analytics piece .

There's no need to be so paranoid here. Flurry is owned by Yahoo. There are many ways they could know about new devices. One path is Yahoo itself tracking that new devices are visiting their sites. Another is the usual unique device tracking analytics that live on pretty much every web page these days.
Cry, complain, rant, if you feel you have to, about the existence of such code, but that existence has nothing to do with whether it is capable of doing the job at hand, namely tracking the new appearance of unique devices on Christmas day.
 
"Google's Pixel smartphone, which came out in October, did not make Flurry's list."

Did not make because of the number of activations? Or because they decided to omit it because they didn't want it to affect perception of the Apple vs Samsung numbers? From what I've seen, there seem to be a lot of people around be that have picked up the Pixel.

LMAO. I guess the fact you see lots of them around is conclusive. Flurry must have thought "Hey here's a great idea, this holiday season lets risk our credibility and piss off Google who control one of the biggest platforms for our services and software".

You do realise what Flurry do right?
 
There's no need to be so paranoid here. Flurry is owned by Yahoo. There are many ways they could know about new devices. One path is Yahoo itself tracking that new devices are visiting their sites. Another is the usual unique device tracking analytics that live on pretty much every web page these days.
Cry, complain, rant, if you feel you have to, about the existence of such code, but that existence has nothing to do with whether it is capable of doing the job at hand, namely tracking the new appearance of unique devices on Christmas day.

its got nothing to do with that, its about how small the slice of the pie that flurry covers is. Also if I bought my device 2 months go, and the first time I go to a flurry covered analytics site etc.....they are misreporting it.... Feel free to explain to me what an activation is according to Flurry?
 
Of more interest (IMHO) is how Apple Watches did over Christmas. A web analytics firm can't provide that information (at least not until Apple sneaks a browser onto the aWatch...)
The best I have seen is data from Slice released about a week ago. Slice gets its data from tracking emails about parcel delivery. (Yeah, yeah, we all know --- you think it's a terrible thing to ever sign up for such a service, you would never let anyone scan your emails for parcel tracking data, those of us who do so are crazy, blah blah. We all know --- please spare us the fulmination.)

OK, so what Slice has released publicly (as always the data released is teaser, to get the full data you have to pay) is that Apple picked up 46% of the ONLINE revenue for WEARABLES this quarter. Online because Slice tracks stuff that is mailed to you. Wearables, so in principle also includes Airpods, but that's probably too small to matter compared to aWatch.

That compares to 37% last year (Fitbit in #2 fell from 37% last year to 31% this year). Gamin and Samsung (the only two serious other smartwatch vendors left) are at 7% and 5%.
IF we assume that the Wearables segment is growing (which I think is true, the hype seems to suggest that even among the crowd who reflexively hate Apple and support fitness trackers) this suggests that Apple Watch is doing better than last year, and is basically reprising the iPhone trajectory. (A minority taste [and slow hardware] the first year, but gradually the common population start to see value in it, especially as OS and HW improve. I'd say we're about at the iPhone 3GS stage --- meaning 2017's aWatch will probably be the equivalent of the iPhone4 as THE breakout point, where aWatch/iPhone go from specialist taste to cultural icon.)

I stand by my previous claim that Fitbit et al are selling feature phones for the wrist, and while those had a moment of relevance, that moment is rapidly fading away -- by 2019 or so I expect that category to be as relevant as feature phones were by, say, 2013.
One IMPORTANT difference compared to the phone story is that far fewer companies appear to have the capability to manufacture a desirable smartwatch than a smartphone. Apple, Samsung, ? (Who will Google contract with for the Nexus Watch? LG, Huawei, Moto all DID launch smartwatches but then, more or less, gave up.The fact that they won't be under the Pixel brand tells us what --- that Google doesn't trust them to be good enough for the *new* Google hardware brand?) Note, for example, that Xiaomi's watch is more fitness band than smartwatch --- it doesn't run Android Wear and doesn't do much. Likewise even Samsung is not running Android Wear.
Obviously this means less competition for Apple; but it may ALSO mean a delay in the tipping over from rare to ubiquity that happened so fast with smartphones because their won't be the pool of cheap low-end devices that people pick up just for the hell of it. Let's see if Google do *something* (release a reference HW design? teach a Chinese manufacture how to create the Package-on-Packages necessary to fit everything into such a small volume?)
 
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its got nothing to do with that, its about how small the slice of the pie that flurry covers is. Also if I bought my device 2 months go, and the first time I go to a flurry covered analytics site etc.....they are misreporting it.... Feel free to explain to me what an activation is according to Flurry?

If you download an App that uses Flurry Analytics, or ads for monetisation and they haven't seen that device before, thats a new activation.

WRT capturing 2 month old devices that have only now shown up on their radar, is there any reason to believe that would skew in a particular direction?

Some example Apps: Skype, Snapchat, Shazam, Angry birds. Most don't openly say how they deal with Analytics. Can put off users but more importantly you don't want the competition knowing anything about this aspect of your business.
 
If you download an App that uses Flurry Analytics, or ads for monetisation and they haven't seen that device before, thats a new activation.

Some example Apps: Skype, Snapchat, Shazam, Angry birds. Most don't openly say how they deal with Analytics. Can put of users but more importantly you don't want the competition knowing anything about this aspect of your business.

In which case that is a flawed indictaiton of sales during that period . It's an indication of an app with flurry analytics being downloaded for the first time on a device . It's app activations and not phone sales . Just by launching a very popular app during that period on iOS or android will have a major impact on your stats.
 
its got nothing to do with that, its about how small the slice of the pie that flurry covers is. Also if I bought my device 2 months go, and the first time I go to a flurry covered analytics site etc.....they are misreporting it.... Feel free to explain to me what an activation is according to Flurry?

You are welcome to ignore what Flurry says, just like you are welcome to ignore what anyone says. 90% of the world has ALWAYS wandered around in a bubble, preferring its own delusions to reality.

But I have to admit I see your arguments as rather weak pleading. As long as there are no unexpected correlations between particular devices and the web sites they go to (even if such correlations exist, the only thing that matters is whether Flurry is unaware of their true extent), what they are doing is the equivalent of random sampling. Sure, the numbers may be off by a percentage or two, but the pattern they show is likely correct as far as the big picture is concerned.
Historically the PAST patterns reported by these analytics companies (like Flurry or Slice) have tracked pretty well with what we learned later (as opposed to "projections" by companies like IDC or Gartner, which have been basically useless, and as opposed to rumors [based on "suppliers" or whatever] which have generally been all over the place, except for Min-Chi Kuo who is generally about 80..90% right).
 
Interesting that most are ignoring the 7% decline in Apple activations as noted from Flurry. Apple was at 51% in 2014, 49% last year and 44% this year.
 
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You are welcome to ignore what Flurry says, just like you are welcome to ignore what anyone says. 90% of the world has ALWAYS wandered around in a bubble, preferring its own delusions to reality.

But I have to admit I see your arguments as rather weak pleading. As long as there are no unexpected correlations between particular devices and the web sites they go to (even if such correlations exist, the only thing that matters is whether Flurry is unaware of their true extent), what they are doing is the equivalent of random sampling. Sure, the numbers may be off by a percentage or two, but the pattern they show is likely correct as far as the big picture is concerned.
Historically the PAST patterns reported by these analytics companies (like Flurry or Slice) have tracked pretty well with what we learned later (as opposed to "projections" by companies like IDC or Gartner, which have been basically useless, and as opposed to rumors [based on "suppliers" or whatever] which have generally been all over the place, except for Min-Chi Kuo who is generally about 80..90% right).

You are completely barking up the wrong tree, forget delusional reality, work on your comprehension . I only said I would like to know what method they used and their assumption on the data sample . Is that difficult to understand?? Please stop with the rambling if you cannot understand my point . How about reading the story again, and feel free to quote how they got their data. God forbid someone asks some logical questions eh ;)
 
In which case that is a flawed indictaiton of sales during that period . It's an indication of an app with flurry analytics being downloaded for the first time on a device . It's app activations and not phone sales . Just by launching a very popular app during that period on iOS or android will have a major impact on your stats.
In which case that is a flawed indictaiton of sales during that period . It's an indication of an app with flurry analytics being downloaded for the first time on a device .

Of course the actual data reflects devices which have first appeared on Flurry's radar during that period. But that doesn't make it a flawed indication of sales. It's common practice (in the absence of the actual data) to utilise data you feel will have a strong correlation with the data you're looking for.

Remember they're not quoting actual numbers here, just ratios. One could argue some relevant data/facts would allow one to better deduce the strength of the correlation between Flurrys data and actual ratio of devices sold. For example differing levels of penetration on each platform could skew the results. As could differences in user demographics.

But are you honestly suggesting you feel the margin of error is 2 to 1 (between Apple and Samsung) or 10 to 1 (between Samsung and the rest). As I've pointed out (and you can verify yourself) Flurry is one of the leading providers of Analytics/Ads. And its present on some very popular apps.

It's app activations and not phone sales . Just by launching a very popular app during that period on iOS or android will have a major impact on your stats.

Not sure what you're trying to say here. Thats the entire point behind the hypothesis that Flurry's activations correlate well with sales. The hypothesis being that people that buy/gifted a smartphone will be equally likely (regardless of platform) to download a Flurry enabled App during the period and therefore Flurry activations will correlate well with sales (ratios, not actual numbers).
 
You are completely barking up the wrong tree, forget delusional reality, work on your comprehension . I only said I would like to know what method they used and their assumption on the data sample . Is that difficult to understand?? Please stop with the rambling if you cannot understand my point . How about reading the story again, and feel free to quote how they got their data. God forbid someone asks some logical questions eh ;)

I explained to you how Flurry derive their numbers. Others in this thread have also done so.
If you want to learn more, you can go to Flurry.com and look around. Lots of stuff there to give you an idea of what they're doing, even if you don't want to read all the technical documentation.

You're the one who is trying to claim (without evidence) that their methodology is wrong and that they're obviously a bunch of idiots who haven't thought of various obvious things. You have some responsibility to justify those claims; it's not enough to simply say "well MAYBE they didn't do ...", not when a service has been around for years and this is their specialty.
 
Of course the actual data reflects devices which have first appeared on Flurry's radar during that period. But that doesn't make it a flawed indication of sales. It's common practice (in the absence of the actual data) to utilise data you feel will have a strong correlation with the data you're looking for.

Remember they're not quoting actual numbers here, just ratios. One could argue some relevant data/facts would allow one to better deduce the strength of the correlation between Flurrys data and actual ratio of devices sold. For example differing levels of penetration on each platform could skew the results. As could differences in user demographics.

But are you honestly suggesting you feel the margin of error is 2 to 1 (between Apple and Samsung) or 10 to 1 (between Samsung and the rest). As I've pointed out (and you can verify yourself) Flurry is one of the leading providers of Analytics/Ads. And its present on some very popular apps.



Not sure what you're trying to say here. Thats the entire point behind the hypothesis that Flurry's activations correlate well with sales. The hypothesis being that people that buy/gifted a smartphone will be equally likely (regardless of platform) to download a Flurry enabled App during the period and therefore Flurry activations will correlate well with sales (ratios, not actual numbers).

And I have no issue with that. I just wanted to know the assumptions behind the conclusions .
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I explained to you how Flurry derive their numbers. Others in this thread have also done so.
If you want to learn more, you can go to Flurry.com and look around. Lots of stuff there to give you an idea of what they're doing, even if you don't want to read all the technical documentation.

You're the one who is trying to claim (without evidence) that their methodology is wrong and that they're obviously a bunch of idiots who haven't thought of various obvious things. You have some responsibility to justify those claims; it's not enough to simply say "well MAYBE they didn't do ...", not when a service has been around for years and this is their specialty.

What is their methodology used to come to this conclusion? Quote it ! For this study!
 
You know, it'd be nice to see a graph that isn't dominated by Apple for a change. It'd be nice to see some fierce competition in the industry again. Maybe one day.

Those graphs are there, but will not hit the frontpage of Macrumors ;)
 
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I think its brilliant that Samsung gained despite losing their holiday flagship and having most bash them for exploding phones etc. Kudos to them. Im more interested in worldwide figures anyway.....Its pretty obvious they would exceed on their hometurf.
 
Now we see why they have little interest in Macs and especially desktop Macs these days. The iPhone and iPad is all Apple needs anymore. They have amazing profit margins and they can sell on brand name alone. The Macs can't do that anymore. The expense to try and compete in the PC market isn't worth the effort when you can sell iDevices in huge volumes with little effort.

I would hope Apple's executive team is smart enough to realize the risk of putting all their eggs in the iPhone basket. A big part of Apple's appeal is how their products work together. Removing the Mac from that equation diminishes the brand overall.
 
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To gather its data, Flurry measured smart device activations and app downloads from the hundreds of thousands of apps it tracks from December 19 to December 25.

What does this even mean? I'd doubt any manufacturer would release "smart device activation" information to a third party like this so I do wonder about the legitimacy of the assertion. How do they track "app downloads from the [...] apps" too? Do these apps themselves have some dubious device collection stats that are furnished to the third party?

I do always wonder about the validity of this type of claim.
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You know when you get a new device and you go through the setup; connecting to the internet and logging on with your Apple/Google account etc.? It's pretty easy to measure when you have to connect to the company's servers to do it.

But how does this third party get access to such info? Are Apple and Google happily turning over our data to them?
 
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