Samsung beat Apple for most chip purchases in 2012 Samsung surpassed Apple as the leading consumer of semiconductors worldwide in 2012, while slumping demand for traditional PCs and notebooks caused several other competitors to reduce their demand, according to the latest figures from research firm Gartner. "The PC market still represented the largest sector for chip demand, …
Why? Selling a second similar phone doesn't magically double your sales. It's not at all linear - and indeed, since there may be advantages to having a single model, having too many models may be detrimental. After all, that's what Apple believe and why they've done it - and if it turns out to be wrong, that's their tough luck.
It makes no sense to claim it's unfair because Samsung chose the better strategy - Apple had every choice to do that too. You might as well say it's "unfair" because Samsung sell better products.
Plus labelling products can be arbitrary anyway - why does a different CPU merit a different product name, but not different storage space? How about we count the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models separately too? Any stat that can be changed merely by conducting a relabelling exercise is completely useless.
(Let's not forget than in Q3 2012, the S3 was the best selling single device, despite it being only one of a much larger number of phones that Samsung sell.)
It's true that they don't just make their own, but it makes business sense to use ones they make where possible - enough to affect the statistics. Also keep in mind that Apple buys chips from Samsung - so for every few chips Apple purchases, Samsung makes a few cents, a fact that the stats don't convey.
And whilst Sammy makes cheap phones (in an extremely packed market, where they have little market share), Apple makes cheap ipods and unlike Samsung, Apple still own a very large chunk of the cheap mp3 player market.
" Apple makes cheap ipods and unlike Samsung, Apple still own a very large chunk of the cheap mp3 player market."
Not where I live ! iPods are not cheap ~over $200. I have an android phone that cost $50, and makes an infinitely better valued device than an iPod, plays mp3's, use GPS, make phone calls, send texts, emails, apps, etc. etc.
From what I see, the only people that use standalone mp3 players, are kids whose parents don't want them to have a phone, for whatever reason.
True, the ipod touches are ridiculously overpriced - I've seen small Android tablets (i.e., the same thing) for £50-100. But the former sell because they get all the media hype.
But there are also cheaper ipods, ones that just do music, no applications or video. It's odd that people suggest that sales of cheaper products from Samsung, Nokia etc should be discounted when it comes to phones, but it's okay to count all of Apple's ipod sales when talking about Apple...
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