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Nobody said the 9 million wasn't real.



Nobody said Apple's definition of sales has changed, either.

It's the same as always: besides what Apple directly sold to end uers in its own stores, it includes millions of units either already arrived at, or in the process of being shipped to, carriers and other retailers.

The only difference from normal, is that some analysts think there was a good amount of iPhone 5C shipments that haven't sold through to end users yet.

Yeah the Gene Munsters of the world who got their predictions horribly wrong and are now doing CYA. Apple hasn't changed they way they report sales so if Munster's estimate was sell in he was still way off. And if it was sell through one has to wonder why he'd use that metric as Apple never reports sell through in press releases. Bottom line is Munster isn't someone worth listening to as he's wrong more than he's right.
 
Apple also uses sell-in for carriers and retailers, who are the overwhelming majority (~80%) of their normal sales.

Apple never reports supply chain units in their sales figures. They report end user sakes. This has been clearly stated the the annual report many times.
 
Apple never reports supply chain units in their sales figures. They report end user sales. This has been clearly stated the the annual report many times.

Show us where you saw this clearly stated in any annual report. You won't find it, because...

The number that Apple announces (e.g. "9 million sold") includes both direct end user sales from their stores, and sales (shipments) to retailers.

As noted on this forum many times, this is clearly stated in their official documents (read this post), and is often talked about in their quarterly calls. Especially when Apple has to explain a drop in current sales, caused by retailers with extra stock left over not yet sold to end users.

This fact is also repeated constantly by financial reporters, and indeed, is the whole point of the current debate over how many 5Cs were sold to end users, versus shipped to retailers.

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Apple never reports supply chain units in their sales figures. They report end user sakes. This has been clearly stated the the annual report many times.

Repeating it does not make it any more true.

Tim Cook (Earnings call Q3 2013): "We sold 31.2 million iPhones compared to 26 million in the year ago quarter, an increase of 5.2 million or 20%. We had a sequential decrease of about 600,000 iPhones in channel inventory in the June quarter."

Factoring in the channel inventory decrease, Apple actually sold 31.8 million iPhones. If the channel inventory increases though. This number must be subtracted from iPhone sales.

Q1 2013.
Bernstein-Analyst Toni Sacconaghi: If I step back and look at the data for this quarter on the phone side, if I adjust for inventory, the iPhone was up very low to mid single digits.

Answer Tim Cook:
"On the phone side, the numbers that you talked about, the sell-in comparisons year-over –year, you really have to convert that to sell-through to look at the underlying demand. And as I’ve gone through before, we did grow channel inventory in the year ago quarter because we were catching up on the roll out of the iPhone 4S, in fact, we grew by 2.6 million. And so you have to factor in to get at the real sell-through."
 
Samsung use 'sell-in' figure, Apple use 'sell-out'. I think shipped to a retailer or AT&T (Samsung) is quite different than shipped to user. (Apple)

I agree with you and that was exactly the point I was making. Apple's figures are far more reliable figures of how many phones are actually in customer's hands than what Samsung and many others always report.
 
I agree with you and that was exactly the point I was making. Apple's figures are far more reliable figures of how many phones are actually in customer's hands than what Samsung and many others always report.

Do you have half the people in this thread on your "ignore list"?

There are many posts here that say that you are wrong, and they quote Apple's own SEC reports where Apple says that Apple counts units in carrier and store inventory as "sold".

"in customer's hands" isn't mentioned by Apple, but Apple does say that "shipped" and "sold" are usually the same thing.
 
Do you have half the people in this thread on your "ignore list"?

There are many posts here that say that you are wrong, and they quote Apple's own SEC reports where Apple says that Apple counts units in carrier and store inventory as "sold".

"in customer's hands" isn't mentioned by Apple, but Apple does say that "shipped" and "sold" are usually the same thing.

Which is still far more reliable than what Samsung and many others report as far as unit sales. :)
 
Whatever makes you feel good inside. I hope in other parts of your life you are more open to facts though.

:confused: I think reporting a combination of shipments and channel inventory provides a much more reliable picture of unit sales than reporting nothing. Do you disagree? Which facts are you confused by?
 
I don't trust anything Samsung says.. They are about as crooked as a company can get, and have horrible customer service. Twice I have been completely burned buying expensive Samsung TV's that broke under warranty, and twice Samsung essentially denied the warranty responsibility and sent me through a gauntlet of Tier one service representatives who were rude and 100% unhelpful.

When I have needed Apple customer service, it was like a night and day difference to Samsung.
 
:confused: I think reporting a combination of shipments and channel inventory provides a much more reliable picture of unit sales than reporting nothing. Do you disagree? Which facts are you confused by?

Apple said "9 million", not "5.5M sell-through and 3.5M in the channel".
 
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