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And we believe these numbers because? Where does Strategy Analytics get their data from? Do any of these companies (aside from Apple) actually report sales data in financial filings?

Analysts companies (and even you) can extrapolate most numbers from reported revenue and profits. Such companies also have people doing counts in import warehouses around the world, plus spies in supplier companies who can tell them how many of a certain part have been made.

As for believability, Tim Cook often repeats analyst numbers like these, at least when they're positive towards Apple :). Do you believe him or not?

Likewise, Apple fansites use these numbers to brag about things like Watch sales, which Apple does not report.

For what it's worth, I've found that analyst predictions are often way off, especially the further out you get. But counts of PAST sales are usually pretty accurate.
 
I don't think I am way off with my guesstimate, but 99% was a bit much , I know there's a growing middle and high class but I also know the majority of Indian people are poor, that's a fact.

Yeah, cheap crap was too general, by non branded I meant cheap knock off phones, I have seen plenty in Asia, weird brand names.
No one is claiming the majority isn't poor. To simply focus on the majority being poor ignores the fact that we're dealing with extremely large numbers. Even if only 10% of India's population is middle class we're still talking about 100 million people. There's no country in Europe with that total population.

Similarly, when it is reported that Samsung "sold" 7.2 million S7s (Galaxy and Edge) in the first quarter, it does not mean they were all sold to end users. Most were sold to and received by retailers. And some quarters, large numbers of those go unsold to end-users until the next quarter.
This really isn't a rebuttal to @kdarling post. AFAIK, no one ever claimed Samsung's shipped numbers meant sold to end users. However a lot of people, to this day, still inaccurately quote that meme level "Apple=sold, Others=shipped"
Evidence:
"Ahhh so they SHIPPED 38M, versus what Apple SOLD. Gotchya!"
That myth has been put to bed long ago, but somehow it still persists. That has never be a claim about Samsung. But your quote is a pretty nice red herring though.
 
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An awful lot of Fandroids would disagree with that statement. Then there are those who hate Apple and so buy Android devices. Then there those who don't care about their privacy.
Then there those who will only buy say Samsung devices.
etc etc etc
To me, there is nothing fundametally wrong with Android other than it is controlled by the king of Adverts, Google.
But my iPhone works for me and does not really get in the way.
Could I get by with an Android device? Probably not. I use the TouchId feature a lot and some apps that I use are not available with the same featureset on Android and then there is the issue of security.
I think maybe the meaning of my post was not clear. Android devices run android. There is little to discourage switching from a Hauwei device to Samsung to a Pixel, to whatever because they are all in the same ecosystem and feature limited by what android can support. Most of these low margin Chinese manufacturers are not spending anything on R&D and certainly are not developing their own OS. I am not criticizing just pointing out that the top android vendors can easily shift from year to year.
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Huawei makes $150 to $350 unlocked models. If Apple came out with $150 to $300 iPhone models with big screens but low end features as those Android models. They would crush the low end Android market. They don't because they would also hurt sales of high end models.



I'd say the Google Nexus now the Pixel does have a catch for repeat customers. Fast OS updates for a few years to the latest Android and regular security patches. I think the Android OS they use is also a vanilla install. None of which you don't get with other Android phones.

If I bought Android. Those are likely the only ones I'd consider. As they cost as much as an iPhone. I can't see that happening. As the iPhone gives me nearly double the lifespan from an OS update standpoint.
If plain vanilla android is what the market wanted, then other vendors will offer it because there is nothing about the OS that prevents doing so. They are all in the same ecosystem and customers can easily change to different vendor. That is why top dog in the android market is quite meaningless... particularly because most of them are on razor thin margins even with a free OS.
 
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Most of these low margin Chinese manufacturers are not spending anything on R&D and certainly are not developing their own OS.

I mildly disagree. They all do R&D to an extent. Heck, even small Vivo has demoed a smartphone with an under-screen fingerprint sensor made by Qualcomm.

As for OS development, they all have customized versions fine tuned to their own hardware... same as Apple does. The idea that they just take vanilla Android and plop it on a phone is incorrect. In fact, some of the makers like Xiaomi got big in great part because they were constantly listening to and implementing user requests, by customizing the OS.
 
Design of various Android phones is nicer. But Apple rules with iOS, much higher quality, and by far the best service.

Let's just say I totally disagree about the iOS part in your statement. For me, iOS is a usability disaster -- it's cumbersome and all of its workflows are broken on a very deep level - so deep, they could only fix it by creating an entirely new platform from scratch. I can't for the life of me understand how - and why - people put up with it. It's similar to people who pretend that KDE on Linux is a better user experience than the Windows desktop or macOS.

I'm not saying that Android is the solution to the world's problems -- but it's the least crappy of all mobile platforms, and programming applications for it with a tool like B4A actually --is-- fun. (I will never understand why Google chose Java as the default programming language for Android either. Java is one of the worst programming language cluster****s out there.)
 
ANYONE who gets a Android OS...I don't care who the maker is....is a FOOL! Apple is the only phone that has a secure OS.....you'd think that'd be an important distinction if you had any smarts!
 
I don't know about their smartphones but Huawei recently released their very first laptop (ultra book) which is similar to Apple's 12" Macbook formfactor and it betters Apple's Macbook even.
It's called Huawei Matebook X.
Youtube it,very impressive and definitely best in class of Windows Ultra Books.
 
Watch this report.

What's your point posting this and the last post here, I already said American companies did the same (Microsoft Windows had backdoors built in), but it seems to me are just picking on China.
America and American companies aren't clean (either).

How does the saying go... holier than thou...amirite.

Edited for spelling.
 
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I mildly disagree. They all do R&D to an extent. Heck, even small Vivo has demoed a smartphone with an under-screen fingerprint sensor made by Qualcomm.

As for OS development, they all have customized versions fine tuned to their own hardware... same as Apple does. The idea that they just take vanilla Android and plop it on a phone is incorrect. In fact, some of the makers like Xiaomi got big in great part because they were constantly listening to and implementing user requests, by customizing the OS.
Ok, fair enough, they experiment with using off the shelf parts. Very few have significant R&D that yields exclusive features. In part because Android supports what it supports.
 
And we believe these numbers because? Where does Strategy Analytics get their data from? Do any of these companies (aside from Apple) actually report sales data in financial filings?

Huawei does, though only on a semiannual basis as far as I'm aware.
 
Most of these low margin Chinese manufacturers are not spending anything on R&D and certainly are not developing their own OS.
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Huawei's R&D expenditure: 2014 $5.9B, 2015 $8.7B, 2016 $9.2B
Apple's R&D expenditure: 2014 $6B, 2015 $8.1B, 2016 $10.4B
 
Ahhh so they SHIPPED 38M, versus what Apple SOLD. Gotchya!

Others have already addressed the shipped v sold issue.

But I'd note that, in this case, iPhone sell-through (which is what I think you're referring to when you say sold) for this past quarter is actually higher than the number reported - it's 44.3 million versus the 41 million sell-in reported by Strategy Analytics and Apple.
 
The comparison is not apples to apples. They don’t compete for the same customer base.
Maybe in the near future Huawei will be on par technology-wise with Apple and compete for the same customer, but that is not today.

See how Samsung is the #1 smartphone vendor, but profits-wise trails Apple. Again it isn’t a comparable comparison.
 
Analysts companies (and even you) can extrapolate most numbers from reported revenue and profits. Such companies also have people doing counts in import warehouses around the world, plus spies in supplier companies who can tell them how many of a certain part have been made.

As for believability, Tim Cook often repeats analyst numbers like these, at least when they're positive towards Apple :). Do you believe him or not?

Likewise, Apple fansites use these numbers to brag about things like Watch sales, which Apple does not report.

For what it's worth, I've found that analyst predictions are often way off, especially the further out you get. But counts of PAST sales are usually pretty accurate.

Well... at least when it comes to iPhone units, Strategy Analytics' estimates should be pretty darn accurate because they wait for Apple to report to announce them. :)

But even with that being the case, they messed iPhone unit estimates up a couple of quarters ago (i.e. they over-estimated them).
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Only internal inventory. As you can read in every report, once a device is shipped to Best Buy or other retailer - the device is marked as Sold. The only exception are their own stores, where a 'sold' device is actually 'sold'.

The channel inventory which Apple reports on (in its conference calls) isn't just internal channel inventory. It includes, e.g., units sent to third-party sellers. Those units are counted as sold for sell-in purposes. But they aren't counted as sold for sell-through purposes until they are sold to customers. The advantage with Apple (i.e. with trying to assess how sales are going for Apple) is that it, in effect, gives us both numbers.

By my estimation, Apple's iPhone channel inventory should be around 16-1/2 million units (as of the end of this past quarter). That's lower than it's been over the last couple of years.
 
In Australia I virtually know no one who uses Facetime or iMessage, even though Facetime is synonymous to video chat.
Whatsapp is king here. Makes sense, as it's spread across multiple devices (including desktops via your phone).
In the US, I virtually know no one who uses Whatsapp. iMessage messages + regular sms messages (which are free) both with the pre-installed messages app are king here.
 
Let them come. There is literally nothing these companies can do to threaten Apple or sway me as an iPhone user.

Not to mention that in the old days, Apple fans were actually delighted to be a minority.

The idea of bragging that over a billion other people have the same device, would've been seen as very Microsoft like.

Although I suspect that most oldtime Mac fans don't consider iPhone fans to be real Apple fans.
 
No escaping the cheaper android phones and having the same quality. Eventually Apple will have to drop their prices to stay competitive . Its just a matter of time.
 
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