I will believe it when I see it. I would also like to see activation numbers, not units shipped/sold. Seems to me that we learn later that these companies are making and shipping in quantity, but they end up on shelves or in warehouses and never activated.
If that is the case, then this is nothing that matters, and it actually hurts the company to sit on inventory like this.
When Google announced 550000 activactions/day last week, people demanded sales figures suspecting fraud. When Samsung releases sales figures, people demand activations. Huh?
People, there's no conspiracy, no one throws away shipping containers full of Galaxy S 2s and Android is selling and being activated and used briskly. Get used to it.
Where have we learned this to be factually true? That can happen for unsuccessful products (like the original Pre). But if Samsung's products were all sitting on the store shelves then Verizon, AT&T, Best Buy, etc. wouldn't keep stocking more Samsung products. They'd say "just send the TVs please". I think it's quite a stretch to say the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II have been anything other than wildly popular.
They actually sell and dump pop music like that, create fake demand and sales.
I can remember a great rant by Andrew Lloyd Webber having a rant over this. It was with Westlife singles, they where mass shipping to stores to rig sales, and dumping stock to create demand. He lost his cool because he had 1st and 2nd place in the charts and the practice was pointless as it was just costing him money he didn't have to loose as he was his own competition.
Having friends who work in retail I have heard stories of cheap other stock products (like high sale TVs) being sent cheap to make up for having to hold stock people don't want, I believe that practice is common. Loss leader I think is the term for doing this.
Not saying it's happening with phones, but other products with obviously cheaper manufacture costs for sure.
Anyway Androids futures in the courts right now, in the hands of Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle. No amount of sales is going to mean anything if legal blockades and patent fees add up.
