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Lenovo Claims Samsung Galaxy Tab Sold Just 20,000
An anonymous reader writes "Andrew Barrow, director of consumer products for Lenovo Western Europe, claims that the original Galaxy Tab only sold 20,000 out of one million shipped. He goes on to say Samsung was 'channel stuffing' in order to generate publicity and become known as a major Android tablet manufacturer."
The latest "iPod/iPhone/iPad-killer" turns out to be a flop. Once competitors actually brings something new to the market instead of another clone, maybe they will get somewhere. So far, nobody can do it.
From Wikipedia,
Sounds analogous to the common practice in the book-publishing industry of quoting "100,000 copies shipped" or whatever, which may or may not bear much relationship to how many books have been sold. In fact, some of the strange practices in book retailing, like publishers' willingness to give a credit to bookstores for unsold books without even having them returned, are in part aimed at making it easier to shovel a bunch of books down the distribution channels.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Does anyone other than Samsung and Lenovo really care?
It's unwise of Lenovo to go for Samsung's throat. Their common enemy is Apple. Hardware is one thing, but they still have to beat Apple on the software side. It would be better for them to cooperate and making Android a real alternative to iPad.
A chain is selling Samsung stuff at lower prices:
P1000 tablet at 379 (instead of 449)
Nexus S at 289 (instead of 449)
There are too many Galaxy tabs in too many sizes, it has suffered total brand confusion. With Apple you just need to decide the Wifi or 3G, Balck or White and GB ammount. With Samsung you got the 7.0, 7.7, 8.9, 10.0, 10.1 and "note" 5.5 and "Player" 3.8, plus they are in legal limbo with Apple which gives you a risk of being stranded with a "banned" product.
You can't be as or almost as expensive as the real thing (iPad) and *not* be the real thing. If they would sell the device at $200, it might have a chance. But for anywhere close to the price of an iPad, everybody is just going to buy the iPad, which is far more polished and comes with many more real tablet apps (not ported phone apps) and the app store.
If people can get more quality for the same price, they generally will. This is why Apple sells every single iPad it can produce, and knockoff products don't sell. Why by the knockoff when the real thing is around the same price?
so had they sold them at 1/10 the price they would have made 5x as much money had they sold all 1 million and had 50x market penetration...
Saying Samsung isn't selling Android tablets doesn't have a positive effect on the popularity of Android devices. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
That means there's 980,000 Galaxy tablets out there nobody wants.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is regarded as the best Android tablet device as well. Hello HP, you had the number two position in your hands, even YOU sold more than that before the fire sale.
Jonathanjk.com
I'm thinking the Color Nook is about the best Android Tablet out there for the money.
The Samsung GTab is a very good tablet, with an alternative 7" size that many prefer to the ipad size. Certainly in the US the sales numbers must be far more than 20,000 given what I see on the forums, ebay, CL, etc. I find those Lenovo numbers highly suspect. There is a hugely active XDA community with folks from all over the globe contributing.
In contrast to their past history, Apple is not selling at a much higher margin over manufacturing costs (or they have lower costs) vs generic competitors.
This makes it very, very difficult to displace an iPad.
Nobody displaced the iPod---obsoleted by the iPhone.
Corollary: A Win "phone" 7 pad going to sell "wonderfully" if the manufacturer also has to pay for the OS license.
notice Microsoft really ahead of the times again, renaming their not-actually-Windows operating system from "Windows Mobile" to "Windows Phone", right at the very moment that mobile operating systems are leaping off the phones.
Quite clever those "Windows 7 Phone" tablets sure to ooze out sometime. They aren't "windows" they aren't "phone" and they aren't version 7. And they'll cost more than Android because of OS licensing.
Channel Stuffing? You mean advertising? Yeah, everyone does that...
This doesn't make sense. A tablet of a relatively unknown Chinese manufacturer, similarly priced, sold more than that in Europe alone. I should know because they are paying us royalties and it doesn't make sense to inflate the numbers to a licensor...
When MS released the Win Phone 7 they counted the retail sales, the devices setting on retail shelves, the devices in the retail channel, the devices on manufacturer's inventory shelves and, apparently, the devices being made at the time. All to make it appear that the WP7 was enjoying greater success than it actually was.
Of course, we are assuming that Lenovo is telling the truth which, along with ethics, seems to be scarce commodities in business these days.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Don't kid yourself.
I'm trying to work out the point of this mud slinging.
It might be the best BUT
It ain't available outside North America. Therefore by definition it is a complete failure.
What the likes of Apple and Amazon (and one or two others) have realised is that they need to think worldwide and not just US centric.
Why do companies ignore a market larger than the US?
Oh, and don't ship stuff to the EU and expect it to sell with a $1 = €1 exchange rate.
Agreed.. It's also the perfect size/weight (well it could be lighter) to take on the go. A 10" tablet is just too awkward to carry around
Those numbers are very dubious... there have been thousands of downloads of custom galaxy tab 7 roms from XDA. For his numbers to be right, the majority of tab users would have to have been on XDA downloading custom roms? Doubtful.
There is no way that Samsung sold only 20,000 of the original Galaxy Tab. There are more than that number sold in the UK alone.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Here in Brazil, tablets are extremely expensive: you don't get a netbook for the price of a tablet... you get a notebook. Mind you, desktops are cheaper than notebooks over here.
That is not wanting to sell. That is expecting payback next quarter/semester. It's obviously calling early adopters idiots.
Early adopters are smarter folks, they have to be because they toast their resources on experimental ideas... it's not like followers who don't need to think, just, well, follow. These kind of guys are extremely averse at being fooled.
Makers of these products should know the whole thing -- desktops, notebooks, netbooks, phones and tablets -- are to be considered a single business and payback considered as a whole... because early adopters certainly do!
I'm in the market for a tablet; I waited some 15 years to buy an LCD TV -- not a flimsy one, but one with antialias for older shows -- and this after being a 10+ year old Linux user.
I want to be an early adopter, but I ain't no fool.
In contrast to their past history, Apple is not selling at a much higher margin over manufacturing costs (or they have lower costs) vs generic competitors.
This makes it very, very difficult to displace an iPad.
This is brilliantly done by Apple and a real problem for Android tablets: who is making any money ? Google is making a bit of money from the ads in the Google apps and the Android market, meanwhile the hardware vendors because of Apple's sharp margin on the iPad and because they don't control their platform are making nothing. It's a repeat of the PC market with Google playing Microsofts' role, only without the golden decade during the boom years. Amazon seems to be the only one who gets it: cut the tablet down as much as possible to make it cheaper, market to your existing customer base, create your own ecosystem with store etc. and tell Google "so long and thanks for all the fish." They'll be the first ones making serious money of off an Android tablet.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Unfounded corprate trash talk. How is this news?
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Thing is, the iPad's been out about - what, nearly 18 months now? I reckon if anyone was able to make and sell a similar tablet for $200, they'd have done so by now.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that unless you commit to millions of units (a hell of a risk when nobody has been able to emulate Apple's success to date), it is not physically possible to manufacture a tablet for much less than US$300. By the time you add on the profit margin for distributors and retailers - particularly bricks & mortar retailers - you're not going to be able to sell it for much less than $450-500.
No, he's right. Plenty of people won't buy from Apple, and for good reason.
...if Apple's injunction against Samsung has anything to do with there supposedly only being 20,000 out of a million units sold?
I got an older model G Tab on clearance for $200 and i couldn't be happier. Prices on tablets are dropping fast. In less than a year we will see a drop from $800 iPads to Amazon's $250 tablet. I thank HP for showing the industry the way forward.
Tablets are here to stay. If they're too expensive for you now, just wait another year.
For about $15 more, you can snag a Viewsonic gTablet from Amazon... though until the gTablet price drop, was looking at the Nook Color. The gtablet is running a much better CPU, though the screen on the NC is a bit better in terms of field of view. my gTablet is pretty narrow, but once rooted to VEGAn-Tab, runs way nicer than the stock ROM. NC needs to be rooted to get the most out of it, which isn't a huge deal, just good to know. I'd like to see either of these hit the sub-$200 price point though.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
No, he's right. Plenty of people won't buy from Apple, and for good reason.
What is plenty of people? 20,000? 100,000? There might be even more who don't buy any tablets simply because they are too broke ass poor.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Millions. Just like there are millions of people avoiding Microsoft Windows. But sure, of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet, most won't afford an iPad. Then again, it's only sold 30-something million units, a comparably negligible number.
Windows 8 seems to be geared entirely towards use on a tablet despite the fact that the public appear to have very little interest in tables. Apart from the iPad (which is triumph of marketing rather than design) none of the other tablets are selling at all. Tablets don't offer the functionality of a PC, nor do they offer the portability of a smartphone, so they have no real purpose.
A lot of companies act like the desktop is dead and tablets will take over, but the reality is that tablets are worthless. Complex tasks can only be done on a PC, while a PC also offers a far better experience for simple tasks like web browsing. The computer industry seems desperate to change purely for the sake of change, and in the process is destroying usability by gearing interfaces towards tablets.
I really hate the direction computing, and particularly user interfaces, have been heading for the last few years. I'm going to live in a cave.
no they wouldnt, they learned that from the smart phones. they can take a 100$ phone mark it up to 500$ market it right and shit the consumer does not know, they are all 500$ phones
its kind of like speeding on the freeway, if your in the pack you might not be noticed
I'm not going to try too hard to counter the fanboyism. I hope I am not feeding the trolls.
Apple were far from the first to invent the tablet, but what they did do was turn a niche market into a mass consumer product through a combination of producing up to date hardware running an OS and application suite that was widely accepted and popular. I could denigrate it to say it was simply an iPod/iPhone maxi, but the new form did allow it to be so much more.
Here's a couple of examples of tablets, I didn't look too hard, these are just from casual memory.
Fujitsu had a sequence of Stylistic tablets, for example one came out in 2004, here's a review http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/fujitsu-stylistic-st5022d-tablet/1707-3121_7-31252752.html
Sony had a couple too, the U50 and U71 http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/VGN-U50/
I don't know if they sold a million, but they definitely sold over 20k. They probably sold over 20k just in Australia, where when they dropped prices to $300, it was impossible to find the tablet in stores. As far as the device goes, it was mildly competent but in tablet terms it's primitive, any tablet running a phone OS is like that. Samsung have moved on and brought out far better devices and just announced the Galaxy Tab 7.7 which is a completely different story altogether. Meanwhile Lenovo have released me too chunky tablets that noone cares about. Samsung are the ONLY company competing with Apple on their terms, they are also the only ones that scare Apple right now. Lenovo can shut up and go back to the lab and figure out why their tablet is twice as thick and heavy as the competition and so expensive when it's basically mobile phone hardware glued to a larger screen and larger battery.
Wanna know how Apple's doing? Just go down and see how busy your local Apple store is. I bought apple stock about 5 years ago on the basis of that. :)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
The galaxy tab is an amazing device and not only that, but we've built a logistics platform for a client that single handedly accounts for over 2k of them.
These numbers are obviously fabricated
I don't mean at Fry's. I mean, in use. Not at a tech conference, but among the typical, everday, consumer.
I've never seen a 7" Galaxy Tab.
As of June, Apple has supposedly sold 25M iPads. 1M Tabs? That means for every 25 iPads I saw "in the wild", I'd expect to see at least 1 tab.
For fun sake, let's assume they sold 25,000. That means I'd at least see 1 for every 1000 iPads. I know I've seen at least 1000 iPads - probably 2-3 times that means. Not a single 7" Tab. (I've seen one 10", and I've seen one Xoom, but that was because it was at a programmer user group meeting, and Xooms were given away at Adobe's conference last year.)
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
So how does Lenovo guy know much about Samsung sales?
Living in Korea, I've seen them fairly regularly. Koreans will let nationalism colour their purchases, and you can buy the tab here on a payment plan from various shops. So it's not that hard to get. The same goes for MP3 players, while I rarely saw anything but iPods in North America, at the same time that I came to Korea, an on the street estimate would have put their market share at only around 10%.
Now a lot of people are using their phones (which are often iPhones, but just as often not).
Also Samsung claims 6 million shipped, not a million shipped.
It's quite clear Lenova seems to be talking out of their ass.
We have an android app and market stats say 5,600 galaxy tabs have our app installed (so probably more people installed and then uninstalled). Can't believe that 25% of galaxy tab users have our app installed.
Don't you think that 20,000 is too little?
The reason why Apple is able to sell at rather low prices is because they know they can sell those things, so they make massive, multi-year preorders of components - screens, CPUs etc - and economy of scale kicks in. Whereas Android tablet manufacturers have no certainty that they can even sell a million of their devices within a year.
That said, it's still possible to beat iPad on price. E.g. Asus Transformer is still selling $100 cheaper.
Android tablet makers don't seen to understand that, with the iPad being used by law enforcement, and hospitals, and all. Nobody needs an Android table that costs just as an iPad.
You'd think there'd have been some really significant discounting in the channels if there were a million sitting in warehouses. There were some brief offers on the original Tab, but there was no fire sale. Presumably Samsung would have an interest in getting them in people's hands rather than simply scrapping them. It would be an expensive - and unimaginative - way to protect brand reputation.
Probably. But it's not a tablet. B&N is VERY careful to market it as an ebook reader. It's priced like an ebook reader and it's capabilities are very good for an ebook reader. By not calling it a tablet, it doesn't get compared to an iPad.
If Google is all about openness, where's the public repository for the search engine?
It is accessible via web browser at www.google.com
Just sayin'.
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The problem is that the margins are pretty thin. Apple doesn't make that chunky a profit on iPads (at least not in the US market- Europe might have some more fat built in)m certainly not compared to their iPhone and iPod ranges. They're doing it on purpose- to trump other competitors on price (in exactly the way you say).
Samsung can't make a tablet as good as the iPad and sell it at a profit for $200. $300 at cost, maybe. But if they want to make a profit on it (and that is kinda the point of a tech company making a product at all), they're looking at a similar price to Apple.
I've seen a Samsaung Galaxy out in the wild, and I don't see many tablets period- so anecdotally they seem to be doing OK in my neck of the woods. Nowhere near the market spread the iPad has, but none the less. As long as they're selling enough to pay back the R&D, I'm sure they won't abandon the sector quite yet.
Also, I'm a little sceptical of any claims a large gadget manufacturer makes about failures at their competitors. I'm sure it's no coincidence that this statement comes a few days before Lenove announce their own tablet product.
First of all, the "ported phone apps" you describe aren't ported, they simply run natively on the same OS. Apple's success can largely be thought of in the same light, if you wanna make a big deal out of it. Apps written for one iOS device run on any of them.
--
Don't be retarded in public, please.
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So how does Lenovo guy know much about Samsung sales?
Samsung published its sales figures. They recently (about a month ago) decided to halt that practice, possibly because it was giving their competitors an advantage in the market.
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There were plenty of PC tablets out there with reasonable touch / stylus input.
But of course, the actual market for such devices did not find stylus input to be reasonable. Maybe single-touch would have been reasonable if the speed, memory, resolution & size had been better, or maybe single-touch just doesn't cut it. You can call me names all day, but you can't deny this fact: the iPad was the first tablet computer to have broad success in the market.
I have one, and one of my colleagues has one.
I suspect this is a troll.