Michal Ždanský "Samsung beats Apple to become top-grossing phone maker." Articles along these lines abounded on the Internet over the weekend. Despite its lower market share, Apple has so far maintained a dominant position in terms of profit from the sale of mobile phones, usually with more than 70 percent, so the news seemed very surprising. However, as it turned out, these were only distorted numbers and fundamental errors in the amateur analysis of two entities - companies Strategy Analytics and Steve Kovach from Business Insider. AppleInsider unfolded the whole analogy:
Everything was started by the analytical company Strategy Analytics with its "research", according to which Samsung became the most profitable phone manufacturer in the world. This press release was picked up by Steve Kovach, a well-known spreader of the recently popular topic about the demise of Apple, writing for Business Insider. The server published the article "Samsung had a profit of 1,43 billion more than Apple in the last quarter" without checking the facts. As it turned out, Kovach was comparing Apple's profit after tax and Samsung's profit before tax, which was pointed out by one of the readers. The article was later rewritten, but has since been picked up by several large servers.
After examining the original Strategy Analytics report, AppleInsider discovered other major mistakes made this time by the analytics firm. First, it compared the profit from iPhones to Samsung's profits from phones, tablets and computers. Samsung has several divisions, the results of which are disclosed separately. The IM Mobile division included in the analysis has two parts, "Handsets" and "Networking". Strategy Analytics included in its comparison the profit generated only by the part that does not fall under network elements, that is, 5,2 of the 5,64 billion dollars, but completely ignored that under "Handsets" Samsung counts both phones and tablets and personal computers. Either the analysts are counting on the fact that Samsung makes no profit from tablets and computers, or they have made a fundamental mistake.
To make matters worse, Apple's calculation of profit from iPhone sales is also highly questionable. Apple does not disclose the amount of profits from individual devices or individual margins. Only the device's percentage share of revenue and average margin (plus, of course, the amount of revenue and profits). Strategy Analytics reports an estimated profit of $4,6 billion. How did they arrive at this number? The iPhone contributed 52 percent to the revenue, so they took the amount of pre-tax profits and simply divided it by two. Such a calculation would only be correct if Apple had the same margin on all products. Which is far from the case, and the number can thus be significantly higher.
And the result of this botched analysis followed by an equally dubious article on BusinessInsider? 833 thousand results were found on Google for the phrase "Strategy Analytics profits Apple Samsung", which is three times more than for the fake news that Samsung paid Apple a billion dollar fine in coins. Fortunately, many major servers have corrected the original report and taken the findings into account. Even this can look like an artificially created journalistic sensation based on poor analysis.
It's cute how stupid people can be in pursuit of a sensation
Tianjin is shit, of course even our overpriced products are shit, the main thing is that they sell :)
At least this analytical company will not cut too much from the credibility next time and prefer to quote elsewhere.