The end of July is quickly approaching, and that means one thing: Companies are soon going to begin reporting their Q2 2012 financial results. Nokia is due to publish their numbers on Thursday, the 19th; Apple’s turn is next Tuesday, the 24th; and as for Samsung, they’re booked for next Friday, the 27th. According to analysts polled by Retuers, Samsung is expected to have sold over 50 million smartphones during the quarter; Apple is expected to have shipped 30.5 million iPhones, and as for Nokia … let’s not go there. Anyway, to quote IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo: “Samsung is expected to be the smartphone hero in the second quarter.”
Now we’d like to remind you that Samsung stopped posting sales volumes during the same quarter last year. What does that mean? They no longer say how many phones they shipped. Sure, they’ll tell you that their flagship device hit X milestone, and that the Galaxy Note has achieved Y sales, but as for the mobile phone division as a whole? Forget about. The same can be said about HTC. Not to worry though, Apple reports how many iPhones they sell, though they don’t break things down by model. And as for Nokia, they’re great. They report volumes for feature phones versus smartphones, and they’ll even tell you how many devices they sold in Europe versus China versus America, and so on and so forth.
Next month, in August, you’re going to see the heavy weight analyst firms compile reports that say which smartphone platform is leading, which company is dominating in terms of profit share, and so and so forth. Usually we quote the big three: Gartner, IDC, and Strategy Analytics. There are some smaller boutique firms out there, but they haven’t been around as long. Plus people think Gartner’s numbers were delivered straight from god, which is pretty hysterical because their forecasts are laughable.