Linked List: November 27, 2011

Sunday, 27 November 2011

Charles Arthur on Misleading ‘Analysis’ of the So-Called Tablet Market ★

Great piece by Charles Arthur at The Guardian:

So Context is telling us that Apple sold more tablets in western Europe in September. Well, why not say so?

Perhaps because there’s a feeling that telling the same story — “Apple still dominates tablet market” — is a bit boring for them to put out on press releases. But this also leads to the faintly misleading releases that don’t actually reflect how the market actually is. Which, at the moment (as has been said before) is much more like the iPod market, where Apple dominated for years with a market share above 60%, than the smartphone market, where Apple is one among many players, with no single vendor dominating. (Android dominates at present, but no single vendor has more than 20%).

I’d say these press releases are more than “faintly” misleading.

Apple’s U.S./International Revenue Split ★

Regarding my guess last week that of the 25 million total iPads Apple sold in the first nine months of calendar year 2011, 10 million were sold in the U.S. — a few readers have asked for any factual basis for that guess. Apple doesn’t release the international split for individual products, but they do announce their total split for revenue. During those three quarters — Q4, Q3, Q2 for financial year 2011 — international sales accounted for 63, 62, and 59 percent of the company’s revenue, respectively.

I see no reason to think the iPad would stray far from this roughly 60/40 international/U.S. split. If anything, the iPad 2 was on sale first here in the U.S., and international revenue is, I believe, tilted somewhat toward iPhone sales. So I think it’s fair to say that 10 million was a conservative estimate for Apple’s U.S. iPad sales over those nine months.