Samsung has grabbed the top spot in many things, such as selling the highest number of handsets per year. But sometimes, the company misrepresents its statistics. For instance, Samsung provided a skewed picture of its Galaxy Tab sales in 2011.
Back in 2011, Samsung claimed that it had sold 2 million Galaxy Tab units. While this number pales in comparison to iPad sales, it was certainly very significant within the realm of the Android world. However, the number was inaccurate and a ‘top secret’ internal document from Samsung, dated February 2012, has now revealed the truth.
It would appear that Samsung only shipped the 2 million Galaxy Tab slates to retailers and wireless carriers. In other words, the tablets were simply shipped to the middleman and not sold to the customers. And the actual number of Galaxy Tab slates that were sold in 2011 was 1 million.
The matter is of huge significance because investors, analysts and many other key players base their decisions on such numbers. A bigger number also reflects good on a given company and may create a sort of peer pressure for more customers to buy that company’s products. That is precisely what happened when Samsung said that it had sold 2 million Galaxy Tab slates.
A number of analysts depicted this as an excellent growth of Samsung’s flagship tablet line-up. Some went so far as to claim that the Galaxy Tab was driving most of Android’s success in the tablet market. The reality is that while Samsung sold 1 million Galaxy Tab slates in 2011, Amazon was able to sell a whopping 5 million Kindle Fire tablets while Apple was in the major league with its 17.4 million iPads sold.
The instance is a reminder that the numbers divulged by tech companies need to be more transparent. And we, as consumers, readers or analysts need to look at them more closely to scrutinize for any willful manipulation.
Source: Apple Insider
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