Samsung trounced Apple in smartphone sales last quarter, flooding the market with twice as many smartphones as its rival, according to one researcher.
Samsung, which reported record third-quarter earnings on Friday, does not outline its smartphone shipment figures. However, IDC released a report showing that Samsung shipped 56.3 million smartphones during the quarter. Apple, meanwhile, said it sold 26.9 million iPhones during its fiscal fourth quarter, which coincided with the calendar third quarter. An IDC rep says both Apple and Samsung’s figures are comparable. “Since the sales figures of both Apple and Samsung represent ‘sales in’ to the channel as opposed to ‘sales out’ meaning sales to consumers or enterprises we presented them as such in our release as it fits with our methodology,” the rep says.
The fact that Samsung bested Apple in unit sales comes as little surprise since Samsung has been beating Apple by that measure for more than a year. Samsung’s shipments are up an impressive 100.4% from last year, according to IDC. The researcher’s estimates are in line with ABI Research, another market research firm, which reported that Samsung shipped 55.5 million smartphones in the quarter.
The strong sales — particularly for Samsung’s Galaxy S III — propelled the company into a record quarter. Samsung recorded a net profit of $6 billion for the September quarter on revenues of about $47 billion. Although the results came in higher than what analysts had estimated, Samsung’s stock price fell about 2% after the announcement in part because the company cited increasing competition in the mobile phone space, lackluster semiconductor sales and sluggish PC demand in the fourth quarter, despite the introduction of Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS.
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