sales

As Apple and Samsung battle for smartphone market share, numbers matter. The problem, though, can be figuring out which numbers to use and how to match them up.

Samsung shipped more than 20 million smartphones in the last quarter, a source told the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), allegedly outshining Apple, which sold 17.1 million phones. Shipments, however, aren't sales, and therein lies the nub.

Citing a "person familiar with the situation," the Journal specifically used the term "shipped" when referring to Samsung's 20 million smartphones. Samsung is due to post its latest … Read more

Phone carriers will soon warn you of impending overages in real time, the iPhone 4S doubles sales of the previous model, and BlackBerry offers apps to make up for services outage last wee

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Apple isn't the only company touting strong smartphone sales today.

Samsung announced this morning that it has sold 30 million Galaxy S and Galaxy S II smartphones worldwide since the line's launch in 2010. According to the company, it has sold nearly 20 million Galaxy S units, making that handset the fastest-selling smartphone it has ever launched. Sales of the Galaxy S II have reached more than 10 million since its launch earlier this year, the company said.

Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy S II are two of the more impressive Android-based smartphones on the market. The … Read more

The iPhone 4S had a huge weekend on store shelves--or more precisely, leaping off store shelves.

Apple said today that it sold 4 million iPhone 4S units worldwide between Friday and Sunday. According to Apple senior vice president for worldwide product marketing, Phil Schiller, that figure is "more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days." Last year, Apple announced that it sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in the smartphone's first weekend of availability.

That said, it's worth noting that at least in the U.S., the iPhone 4S had a … Read more

AT&T and Sprint Nextel both said that the new iPhone 4S helped drive record single-day sales for each carrier.

Sprint said it reached its best-ever day of sales by 10 a.m. PT. AT&T said that as of 1:30 p.m., it had activated a record number of iPhones on its network.

The new iPhone, despite the lack of a major redesign, continues to be a tremendous draw, significantly outstripping the demand for any other smartphones. The iPhone 4S drew lines at Apple stores around the country.

In addition, the iPhone also continues to be … Read more

The video game industry just can't seem to turn things around.

Research firm NPD announced yesterday that total industry sales on hardware, software, and accessories hit $1.16 billion last month, representing a 6 percent drop compared to September 2010 when industry sales reached $1.23 billion.

Although September's performance was somewhat disappointing for the industry, it was far better than August. NPD reported last month that industrywide sales in August hit just $669.9 million, representing a 23 percent decline compared to the $873.8 million the industry generated in August 2010.

On the hardware side last … Read more

After much fanfare, a minor pre-order meltdown, and what was perhaps the largest collection of Apple software updates to go out in a single week, the next iPhone arrives tomorrow.

If it feels like a long time since the iPhone 4 went on sale, you're not mistaken. The iPhone 4S, Apple's follow-up to the iPhone 4, comes a few months later than Apple has typically released previous handsets, and it seems even longer given that leaks led to the world seeing the final design months before it was officially unveiled.

From the looks of it, Apple appears to … Read more

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet continues to sell at a brisk pace, though it remains to be seen whether the gadget will match the torrid pace that Apple's iPad set.

In the six days after the first day of preorder sales, the Kindle Fire has been selling at a rate of about 20,000 units a day, according to eDataSource, a market research firm. This follows an eDataSource report on Monday that said Amazon sold an estimated 95,000 Kindle Fires on the first day of preordering. The Kindle Fire was announced on September 28, and Amazon began taking … Read more