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Yes, cos if you had a phone shop with 50 phones in stock, then naturally your would order another 50 for stock when you were not selling any.

I don't understand why people still grasp as this idiotic comment.
Oh they are not sold, just in stock.

Who orders more stock from manufacturers unless they are selling them and need more stock?

Maybe if you read the thread you might get an explanation that applies to this specific case.
 
I am one of those that bought the S3 for my wife. She threw it in my face, and said what a piece of cr@p.

So I got her a iphone 5 and she is happy again.

It was a interesting experience to try the android flagship and it isn't that great, compared to the iphone /iOS experience.

What a horrid person you are married to, I feel so sorry for you living with such an ungrateful human being :(
 
I am one of those that bought the S3 for my wife. She threw it in my face, and said what a piece of cr@p.

So I got her a iphone 5 and she is happy again.

It was a interesting experience to try the android flagship and it isn't that great, compared to the iphone /iOS experience.

If she threw it in your face then she has no respect for you. But then again, your whole story is probably made up.
 
That's all BS. Reporting sales and shipments is simply a choice. Samsung did it until a couple years ago.

To be more accurate, Samsung only started reporting sales a few years ago, then stopped after a couple of years.

I think they stopped partly because they got so embarassed when that early tablet sell-through was so little in relation to the store sell-in. (That's the situation that causes so many people to continue to repeat "sales vs shipments!" even though it's no longer the case.)

The other reason probably is, they had always been secretive and went back to what they were comfortable with. In general, companies in that part of the world don't like showing all their cards.

So now they simply speak up when they hit milestones.

Mind you, Apple isn't really that forthcoming with information, either. They never break out individual iPhone model sales, for example. They also never report how many sales are refurbished units, which could be a lot. I know I've bought a ton of them :)
 
Mind you, Apple isn't really that forthcoming with information, either.

Everything is relative. They are significantly more transparent than the rest of the industry.

They never break out individual iPhone model sales, for example.

Not "never". They do report sales specific to new models around most launches. But you are probably just thinking about quarterly reports.

They also never report how many sales are refurbished units, which could be a lot. I know I've bought a ton of them :)

Why does that matter?
 
do you know why shipments are made?

Yes. They're made to get the product into the hands of retailers so they can be sold to users.

That's the distinction between shipments and sales. The PlayBook, for example, *shipped* millions of units, but only *sold* a fraction of that. You can still find some units from the initial shipments in stores (where you can find a store that hasn't returned their stock to the distributor for a refund).
 
I have both the S3(personal) and iPhone5(work), what I always tell people is that it really comes down to the user - get whichever phone you like best. In general, I tell them the iPhone is great if you don't wanna "tinker" with the settings and want it to work straight outta the box, and the Android is great if you like combustibility.
There's no "right" answer here, the Galaxy is not broken like you suggest imo

Oh my.. I had heard the Galaxy SIII has issues with running hot but I didn't know they were actually bursting into flames!!??!?! I sure am glad I didn't choose one recently when it was time to change phones at work.
 
Do you know of the HP Touchpad? Might want to look that one up and how many they 'shipped' vs 'sold'

You obviously have NO CLUE on how retail works or you wouldn't have made that ridiculous statement.

To be fair, HP sold pretty much every Touchpad they shipped. Unfortunately, most of them were sold at a loss during the post-discontinuation fire-sale period.
 
To my knowledge, Samsung is not publicly traded in the U.S. exchange and is thus not beholden to SEC reporting requirements, i.e. a 10-K, 10-Q and have zero disclosure requirements to people in the U.S. Apple on the other hand is publicly traded and must file these reports.

I'm fairly confident that Samsung is only listed in the Korean market with shares sold in secondary markets. They probably report under IFRS and not U.S. GAAP but the reporting requirements are quite similar due to a purposeful convergence between the two standards.

I always hear this shipped and not sold argument like it is some sort of mantra. It really doesn't matter whether it is shipped or sold. Samsung likely couldn't tell you how many phones are in customer's hands because they don't sell the phone to the end user. Their customers are the carriers and retailers and for all intents and purposes, it is considered a sale for them when it is sold.

Whether the shipment is Free on Board Destination or Free on Board Shipping point, once Samsung either puts those phones in the hands of the common carrier or the carrier delivers the phones to the retailers, the phones are considered a sale.

Purchase returns and allowances are accounted for through the use of valuation accounts and does not go into figuring revenues. With Purchase Returns, there are a lot of data points that can be drawn from to determine whether the allowance is appropriate or not. Either way, purchase returns are a very small percentage, I would venture that 5% would be too high.

Regardless, Samsung cannot unilaterally channel stuff. It is one of the first things auditors look for when accounting for Sales. There was a big problem with this with manufacturers back in the day where they would ship goods at the end of a quarter to report a sale and to just have them send it back later.

Samsung's customers aren't little mom and pop shops. In the case of the U.S., they are duopolies like AT&T and Verizon, which I imagine manages their inventory level very well. You simply do not tie up your cash in inventory if you do not have to. That is a very, very basic tenant of business. You maintain enough inventory to be stocked enough so that you don't lose a sale, any more than that and you're messing up your cash flow.

Samsung's customers wouldn't stand for it. When auditing a company's financials, one of the things tested is cutoff. What you do is you look at shipped goods near the end of the quarter and see if they have a valid purchase order from the customer, a bill of lading, an authorization for shipment, and eventual payment.

Shipped, not sold, shipped not sold.
Please, I am very tired of hearing that.
 
I know this is anecdotal but I never see Samsung smartphones in the wild. I see iPhones constantly and know loads of people who own iPhones. I know people who have Android phones but can't think of one person who owns a Samsung Galaxy.

You'd think with these kinds of sales, I'd encounter owners/users a little more often. Am I living in some kind of bubble? :D

Then perhaps you need to get out more. Because I know loads of people with galaxy devices.

At my job last year most of them were sporting around iphones. Now they carrying around gs2,gs3 and galaxy notes.

Even my brother who was a huge iphone fan now has a galaxy note 2.
 
I know this is anecdotal but I never see Samsung smartphones in the wild. I see iPhones constantly and know loads of people who own iPhones. I know people who have Android phones but can't think of one person who owns a Samsung Galaxy.

Honestly, none of my friends own iPhones. Nobody in my family does either. I'm a teacher - and I'd say about 1/3 of my students own SGS IIIs, another third older Android devices and another third iPhones (mostly older ones). I know because I have to confiscate them on a regular basis :)
 
The other reason probably is, they had always been secretive and went back to what they were comfortable with. In general, companies in that part of the world don't like showing all their cards.

Are you talking about Apple or Samsung? Sounds to me like it could be either one.
 
Apple needs to get with the program and make the iPhone 6 a 4.5-4.8" 16:9 screen.

THAT ALONE would = total cell phone dominance

they also need to overhaul iOS or they'll go the way of the dodo (*). Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anytime soon. Instead, they're falling further and further behind. If they keep the 5 for another year and then release another minimalist update (5S), without a major update to iOS, they're gone. Just look how quickly RIM disappeared - that took less than a year. For Palm it was perhaps 2 years. But in both cases, it was for the same reason: they failed to modernize the OS while other companies went ahead and produced more innovative products.



*) Dodo = RIM and Palm
 
To my knowledge, Samsung is not publicly traded in the U.S. exchange and is thus not beholden to SEC reporting requirements, i.e. a 10-K, 10-Q and have zero disclosure requirements to people in the U.S. Apple on the other hand is publicly traded and must file these reports.

I'm fairly confident that Samsung is only listed in the Korean market with shares sold in secondary markets. They probably report under IFRS and not U.S. GAAP but the reporting requirements are quite similar due to a purposeful convergence between the two standards.

Samsung chooses not to release unit shipments. Apple chooses to. It's as simple as that.

I always hear this shipped and not sold argument like it is some sort of mantra. It really doesn't matter whether it is shipped or sold.

The difference does matter if you're claiming to have the most sales.

But, of course, you are right that the mantra is parroted by people who don't understand the relationship.
 
....
Samsung's customers aren't little mom and pop shops. In the case of the U.S., they are duopolies like AT&T and Verizon, which I imagine manages their inventory level very well. You simply do not tie up your cash in inventory if you do not have to. That is a very, very basic tenant of business. You maintain enough inventory to be stocked enough so that you don't lose a sale, any more than that and you're messing up your cash flow.

Lots of good points, but this last one is critical. Many on this forum seem to think that AT&T can manage iPhone inventories, but not GS3 inventories.

The data, pardon the pun, apples to apples - both are shipped numbers. Both are high demand phones. The world is not full of vast quantities of unsold GS3s. It is an excellent phone, and the first real contender to the iPhone series.
 
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