Samsung Electronics Co said on Tuesday its Galaxy Gear has become the world’s most popular smartwatch with sales reaching 800,000 since its debut two months ago, defying some market concerns the accessory would fail due to a lack of compelling features.
The South Korean firm said Gear sales have been better than its own expectations and it would expand sales promotions for the wearable device for the crucial year-end holiday sales.
Impressive for a poorly reviewed device. I guess this is what marketing and bundling can do – then again, without bundling, flagship smartphone sales would crumble like three week old bread too.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who found this device not compelling at all. But, anyway, there are 2 things that the original article does not justify and makes me very dubious about its credibility.
First, where did they archive the 800,000 sales? I would be amazed if most of the sales were made here in the North America. I believe that the figure is mainly achieved by the local sales in S. Korea, where people just get crazy about whatever made by S. Korean brands. Why do I believe so? Because people around me don’t even have a word about this device. It’s that simple!
Second, there are reports pointing out the return rate of the product is somewhere near 30% of the number of sales. The article seems to have avoided mentioning it entirely on purpose. If we apply that rate to the reported sales number, the actual sales will become 560,000, which is a big difference from what is being reported in the article.
If we add these two up, we could easily draw out the possibility that this device is not even being praised in the place it was born.
Recently, S. Korean firms have a tendency to deceive the general public for market shares. [http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/samsung-fined-…] Maybe I’m a little hysteric, but I try to think more critically these days when I’m presented with articles like this.
Edited 2013-11-19 17:17 UTC
According to SamMobile, they’ve sold about 50000 in South Korea.
In truth, Samsung company gives out huge discount on Samsung products to Samsung employees to drive market share considerably. Go figure
Never loose old bread :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_toast
Don’t know the receipe for phone, perhaps incremental updates (copy-paste, multi-tasking, higher dpi screen, …)
Kochise
According to a Korean publication at http://m.yna.co.kr/mob2/kr/contents.jsp?cid=AKR20131119095451017 the number is actually the amount of these watches shipped off to retailers, not the amount of watches sold to final end-users and as such this is just your usual PR-marketing attempts at distracting you from the truth.
The thing is, all sales figures in this industry are *shipped*, because they have no idea how many are actually *sold* at any given time. Even Apple, which always claims it reports *sold*, actually reports *shipped* – they just redefine “shipped” into “sold” in their SEC filings. Considering the shelves bursting with iPhones and iPads, Galaxy phones and tablets, and so on, at electronics retailers here in The Netherlands, these “shipped” figures are always problematic.
However, we can assume that retailers – especially in these trying economic times – aren’t keen on keeping huge inventory, so I think that right now, the difference between shipped and sold are smaller than they have ever been.
I agree. The shipped vs sold argument is tired. If a company stuffs the channel one quarter, the following one their volumes will adjust accordingly because their inventory will rise.
Retailers don’t keep ordering slow selling products, so while initially shipped can be used to mislead on figures (probably unintentionally because Samsung can’t track every watch that leaves a brick and mortar) the charade can’t be maintained for a long time.
Even the firms that claim to track sales to end users are guessing at best, this is impossible to keep track of precisely with such a diverse supply chain.
Problem is that in this case the product is only two months old and the retailers are probably still selling their initial inventory.
So the shipped vs sold argument is perfectly valid here. Better understanding on actual sales will come within a few months, but today, those sales figures are most probably inflated.
Not true for Apple because they also now how much devices are activated and all of them are their own products. Apple also gives how much devices are in the inventor channel along with sales: I don’t know how they keep track of these figures, but they do.
Edited 2013-11-20 10:09 UTC
Aren’t “shipped” products the same as “sold” as far as the manufacturer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor) is concerned? The store buys the devices from the manufacturer and then resells to the end user with a markup. As far as Samsung/Apple etc are concerned they have sold the product. I very much doubt Samsung gives stock to AT&T etc in the hope they will sell them and agrees to take them back if they don’t.
Stores will ‘buy’ a lot of this stuff in an unproven market the following:-
1) Sale or return
2) 120 day terms
Both of which help the cash flow of the store.
I remember having an interesting argument with one of my MBA tutors over this very point. We agreed to differ!!!!
with 120day terms the only figure the maker can quote are the shipped numbers.
We only have to look at what happened to Surface-1.
Time will tell as to how many get actually sold. I’ll see what is happening with them at the Samsung shop on Portobello Rd at the weekend. Perhaps I’ll give them a rant on how crap the Galaxy Mini is?
Well, when you have over 30 percent return rate ( http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/doa-the-galaxy-gear-reported… ) do they all still count as sold? Samsung obviously would like to count them all as sold, regardless of whether they were then returned or not..
Well, are they returned to Samsung or to retailer? In second case Samsung is right to count them as sold.
To retailer. One more fun number, probably as acurate as that Best Buy return-rate ‘leak’, is that the Gear is meanwhile #15 on best-seller Electronics & Gadgets at Amazon. But then Lumia was number #1 and sold only some tausend units in US. So much for rates, ratings and numbers leaked by accident or promoted in bestseller-lists at online shops.
Edited 2013-11-19 23:27 UTC
Well, they were obviously sold otherwise hey couldn’t be returned
Tee hee… companies have a “solution” for that. Want to sell our device? You have to purchase a boatload of devices, even if you can’t sell as many (“purchase commitments”, it’s called)
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/11/verizon-could-face-up-to-14-bil…
Apple does it, wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung does it too, since they act all Apple-like recently (and this is not a compliment)
“shipped” numbers are completely bogus for very high-profile mamufacturers like Apple and Samsung, since they dictate (probably dictare in the case of Samsung) how many devices retailers will buy, aka how many devices will be shipped. This is also why salesmen are instructed to push Apple (and Sammy?) so aggressively.
Edited 2013-11-19 23:17 UTC
Not always. Just because you see freshly stocked shelves is not an indicator of non-sales. They might just be re-stocking shelves quickly after product is sold. One need only look at the frequency of product sold within a short time frame for an understanding (if only a general one) of product popularity.
As far as iPhones and iPads are concerned, its been my experience that they sell as fast as they can stock them. One might say the best indicator of a products popularity is if they have to actually turn you away because the products displayed on shelves are all reserved. That happened to me on more than one occasion when buying apple product.
Considering the reviews of samsung’s “stupid watch” (as some have called it) I would wager that their sold numbers are closer to the shipped category. On that note, Apple’s sold numbers are likely accurate (assuming you don’t believe the conspiracy theory that apple ships limited product to retailers to tout “sold-out”.
Curious why the shipped/sold argument was not referenced in the summary of this posting while you tend to bring it up when dealing with “sold” numbers for Apple specific products.
Edited 2013-11-20 04:23 UTC
Oh boy.. In truth, those articles about Samsung (at least) on Korean publication are mainly derived(copied) from Samsung’s marketing report(on Samsung website). You should not trust numbers and etc 100%. They even have fake articles on Samsung website. Pretty shame.
Why does ANY one believe ANY number in relation to Android. I mean I understand that people want to support it and promote it but come on at this point you can’t believe any number.
We have this number that Sammy is trying to spin, then you read the fine print and you see its 800,000 shipped. Out of that the reality is a little over 50,000 sold.
The fact that Sammy doesn’t give out numbers unless they are trying to spin should be clue enough its BS.
Edited 2013-11-20 00:35 UTC
I dunno. Why would you believe any number related to any product?
If are a hipster and you want to be trendy and you buy an iDevice because you believe in the coolness factor, why not buy a Samsung smartwatch, too?
if you are posting on the internet why not make sense too?
look someone named twitterfire making fun of ‘hipsters’.
Edited 2013-11-20 14:05 UTC
Because it’s not the iWatch they’re all waiting for?
50,000 to people, 800,000 to stores
50,000 sold to people, 15,000 returned, 35,000 kept them … for now.
Just wondering. Has anyone here seen anyone or know anyone that has actually bought/worn one and kept it?