All Articles Tagged math

Highlights from a report from a report by Strategy Analytics:

• iPhone tops AT&T sales chart at 13% of AT&T’s device sales
• 4th best-selling phone in U.S., selling 1.1 million units. Total # of iPhones sold: maybe 1.325 million
• based on current trajectory, iPhone will be #1 best-selling phone in the next quarter or two
• current #1 is still the RAZR V3
• two age segments standing out that are purchasing iPhone in droves: 20-30 and 50-60.

Having owned a RAZR and been frustrated with the poor software shipped on it, I will do a little dance when it’s no longer #1.

figure 1: iPhone vs. HTC Touch vs. Nokia N95

According to an article in ComputerWorld, the iPhone handily beat other smartphones (printable version) in almost all of the usability categories. The iphone competed against the HTC Touch (Windows Mobile) and the Nokia N95 (S60 Symbian) in usability tests performed by Texas-based Perceptive Sciences. Their test group was with ten people that had never used any of the three phones, so it’s unfortunately a fairly small sample size. The article title gives the net result away, but read on for the highlights from their test.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes that the iPhone sales have tripled since the price cut. There’s also a fun trail of percentage errors, too. It’s like following bread crumbs! Business2 has already fixed their error, but information week hasn’t yet. So let me show you Eric Zaman’s error:

figure 1: his errors. let me show you them.

Now that Apple has posted their sales numbers, some analyst doubters are poking their way out.

First up is Ted Wallingford of downloadsquad, who forgot that the 10 million mark goal is for the end of 2008, not 2007, and he’s just not excited about the hype anymore. When the sentence read this:

In order to achieve this feat now, he needs retail to sell 9 million units in four months

I could understand the premise of the article. But when it’s changed to this:

In order to achieve this feat now, he needs retail to sell 9 million units in four 16 months

ZOMG! They’re going to have to sell an extra two million at the same rate in the next year and a half. The comments there are worth a read.

And this sales analysis article is crud too, as noted by John Gruber of Daring Fireball (I’m pleased to note that we’re sponsoring his RSS feed this week). I would also hope that a stock analyst can work with graphs that are something other than linear. Otherwise… it may be time to find a new analyst. Here’s a hint, they don’t call it the “demand curve” for nothing.

figure 1: a typical college student. this picture was taken mid-survey.

You’d never guess it was true before a survey indicated it, but students are more likely to buy the iPhone now that it’s $200 cheaper. 4% of kids were going to get an iPhone once their contract expired, which jumped to 11% on September 5. Those purchasing within the next month or so jumped from 2% to 4% in the same timespan, and those planning to get an iPhone skyrocketed from 0% to 0.5%. That last increase is practically infinite.

According to a survey by Markitecture (via Ars Technica), only 6% of people polled plan to buy an iPhone in the next year. Only six percent, they say! You know, if they follow through, that could put Apple in front of Microsoft in market share, currently at 5.7% (via Canalys). The article doesn’t say if it was a global or national survey, however.

Markitecture notes that the RAZR had about 6% of the phone market at its peak. Ars Technica doesn’t note the margin of error, but 6% of the global phone market (around 1 billion phones) is 60 million phones. At $500 each that’s 30 billion dollars. Granted, not net profit. If Apple is looking for 20% profit margins, as they’re wont to do, it looks like they’d potentially grab about 6 billion dollars.

It’s starting to look like Jobs set the bar low in January when he announced he was looking for 1% of the global phone market. Of course, one doesn’t like to set goals and then miss them, it makes one look bad. But, that’s part of what makes watching Jobs fun. When they destroy the 1% goal, he’s going to act like the most astounded person in the world. Whaaaa?