Apple Reports First Quarter Results | Hacker News Reader

Apple Reports First Quarter Results

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132 pointsaaronbrethorst98 comments

One interesting figure is: 16.24 million iPhones versus 7.33 million iPads + around 10 million iPod Touches. That's around 17 million non-iPhone iOS devices versus around 16 million iPhones, and illustrates why increasing Android sales don't seem to dent iOS sales/usage statistics as much as the phone OS debate might suggest. Most iOS devices being sold are, in fact, not iPhones!

Totally. Non-phone iOS devices are the elephant in the room and drive an incredible number of app sales. For example, if you look at the top selling apps in the App Store, they are mostly games that are being downloaded on iPod Touches.

Not sure I follow. How do you know those games are being downloaded on iPods and not iPhones?

From those stats we don't know, but app developers do know. I would say there are actually significantly more ipod app sales than iphone. It depends on the app, but the app developers that I hang out with tend to have more sales on ipod devices.

How do they know? I am an iOS developer and there is no way of seeing whether my apps are downloaded to an iPhone or an iPod (afaik).

Edit: That is, from iTunes Connect. Maybe your pals use some sort of usage logging/statistics from within the app.

If you're not actively collecting statistics from your users, then you're missing out on a huge amount of information.

The biggest gains for me have been:

1. when I could discontinue previous OS version (3.x) support because most of my users had transitioned to 4.x

2. It lets me know which features my users are actually using so that I can focus on enhancing and refining them.

3. It lets me know how many installs vs. sales that I have. And yes, this includes any pirated copies.

Users that mail you for support or hints, I generally ask them what device they use. There are a lot of iPod touches out there.

Maybe iPod touch users are stupid? In all seriousness, that's not a very rigourous way of polling.

I don't understand what "Android sales don't seem to dent iOS sales/usage statistics as much as the phone OS debate might suggest" means.

Most stats from various sources and markets over the last year, like sales and installed base, have Android behind but growing (much) faster than iPhone/iOS. So phone sales only exceeded Apple's in the US 2 or 3 quarters ago, and we only had data showing that about 1 quarter ago. Installed base is estimated to be moving above iPhone right about now, iOS (including iPads and Touches) will obviously take longer. Android share of the tablet market (the Galaxy Tab basically) is already at 25% for the last quarter apparently.

So in summary, anyone claiming Android was already ahead of iOS wasn't using any reliable figures, and mostly I've seen this in reverse (i.e. if Android is so far ahead where are all the quality games). Claims that Android looks like the future are (despite being predictions) on much firmer ground given the historical trends in the data.

How did you estimate the number of iPod touches?

From the conference call highlights at macrumors.com:

"Music products: 19.45 million iPods. iPod touch sales grew 27% year-over-year. Now over 50% of iPod sales."

Over 50% of 19.45 million must be around 10 million.

Thanks! I think this is the first time they actually somewhat broke down the iPod numbers which makes sense because it allows them to emphasize the importance of iOS.

Yep - Macworld, in their conference call comments, noted that this is the first time they broke out iPod Touches. And for good reason. What an insane number!

Does it have to be raw numbers? Could it be that iPod touch sales (money) stands for more than 50% of all iPod sales?

If its true: Who buys all these iPod touch? Where I live (Sweden) iPhones are very common and touch is not. They are not very cheap either.

I have an iPod touch (I’m from Germany.) and there are several reasons for that:

1. An iPhone is prohibitively expensive for me. I want my cheap prepaid phone, thank you.

2. iPhones only have up to 32GB of space, I need 64GB.

3. I need some kind of portable music device anyway that can save all my music.

I paid 350€ for it which is certainly relatively cheap, a great price for what it does.

>　Most iOS devices being sold are, in fact, not iPhones!

Pedantic reply: half ≠ most, half = half

But that aside, I see your point: clearly iOS can still be influential regardless of the shift in the cellphone market space. What will be interesting to see is how (or if) that changes when Verizon gets the iPhone...

Half plus one is most.

Most humans in north america are women.

I see nothing wrong with that statement, it certainly wouldn’t confuse me or seem strange to me. I would take it to mean that there are slightly more woman in north america than man. The context (i.e. the ratio of men and women is usually very close to 50:50) would tell me that there are likely not many more women in north america than men.

> I would take it to mean that there are slightly more woman in north america than man.

That's a terrible assumption. The problem with 'most' is it doesn't imply an exact number, it could be 0.01% more or 99.9% more and either is 'most'.

Nothing about that statement tells you it's near a 50:50 ratio.

Since we're not dealing with exact numbers (obviously 17 and 16 million units is rounded off) and because the difference is fairly small ~5%, it's less confusing to note a more specified relationship rather than an ambiguous and potentially confusing 'most'. Esp if later it's quoted out of context: "Most iOS device sales are not iPhones," (how many is most? how close is the margin?) is less informative than, "IDevices excluding the iPhone comprise about 5% more sales, with iPhones selling 16m units and other devices selling 17m."

The usage of “most” was completely correct and not in any way wrong or ambiguous since the comment contained pretty exact estimates and didn’t only use “most” to describe the relationship. Context matters and it is prudent to assume that HN readers possess basic reading skills.

Take “most” for what it is and always has been, a simple description of plurality or relative majority.

(You are quite correct that I cannot just assume that the gender ratio in North America is close to 50:50 but you are at the same time also completely missing the point. Context matters and context makes “most” a useful word. It’s alright to make use of term “most” in the context of gender ratios of geographic areas because everyone knows that gender ratios are always close to 50:50. “Most” is a very broad term but if used in the right context perfectly appropriate and not confusing.)

> The usage of “most” was completely correct...

This is simply wrong.

When dealing with numbers, esp financial data, it is poor form to not make specific analysis in the descriptions of the data.

Saying 'Most iOS sales are not iPhones' is actually very misleading even if generalized sales numbers are included in the same context.

Ugh, this quarter you will receive 'most' of your bonus. Oops, I hope you didn't assume that 'most' meant 95% or even 75% because it actually meant 51%.

> Context matters and it is prudent to assume that HN readers possess basic reading skills.

There is absolutely no reason to not be more specific. You're just defending poor form at this point and it wasn't even your comment.

Lastly, it's always bad to assume. Why should we assume that this won't be quoted out of context? Assumptions lead to bad things in my experience. It's never prudent to assume.

Why are you inventing arbitrary rules for the usage of “most” that have never before existed? I don’t understand that at all. “Most” denotes a relative majority and always has. It’s correct to use “most” that way.

Why are you assuming that “most” must be at least a 75% or so majority? If we are talking about wrong and bad assumptions then that is the one.

You might argue that it’s not exact enough (I don’t agree at all because the comment includes specific numbers) but to say that using most in that context is wrong is just mind boggling to me.

> Why are you inventing arbitrary rules for the usage of “most” that have never before existed?

I'm not. The rules aren't arbitrary, they're based on the grammatical roots of the word.

Your consistent problem is your assumptions, which run rampant throughout your comments, as evidenced here.

The colloquial meaning and usage of a term will always trump the technical reality.

Commonly, 'most' is used to mean there is more than a simple majority, e.g. a supermajority.

"Most senators voted in favor of the bill," this isn't said when 'most' refers to 51 senators voting in favor of a bill because journalists understand that that would cause confusion. Instead something like, "The Senate was nearly split on the vote, 51 to 49," is used because it is far more descriptive of that actual situation.

The relative position of numbers matters, whether you want to accept that or not. However you sound like a fool promoting ambiguity of information and obfuscation of data.

I must say, I’m really not familiar with this usage of “most”. It’s the first time that I hear anybody telling me that you shouldn’t use “most” if the majority is slim.

Where does your assumption come from that colloquially, “most” means “large majority”?

Please see, quoted below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2121525

Now for a quick lesson in grammar, sorry it had to come to this but besides the colloquial instinct, the grammatical roots of 'most' will show, unequivocally, 'most' should not be used as it was.

'Most' is the superlative form of 'many' or 'much'. 'Many' is defined as 'a large number of' and 'much' is defined as 'a large amount'. This naturally implies a statistically significant large majority, not a simple majority such as 51 to 49.

When there is a close division we don't say, 'most of the Senators' we say 'just more than half of the Senators'. This is because we haven't reached a point where we can adequately say that a 'a large number' (as compared to those voting against) 'has voted for'. For this reason we reserve 'most' for situations where more than a simple majority, e.g. often a supermajority, comprises one of the two or more things we are comparing.

Actually, grammatically speaking, superlative adjectives should _only_ be used when three or more things are being compared, however this is a commonly ignored rule.

There is one final point, when one of the two or more things you are comparing reaches a point where it is greater than two thirds of the total, we begin to say 'nearly all,' "Nearly all of the Senators voted to pass the finance reform bill today, voting 89-11."

Well, the difference between sold iPhones and other iOS devices clearly is “statistically significant” and a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate is also “statistically significant” (but the term does not make any sense if applied to Senate majorities). So yeah, most it is.

You're missing the point: The difference between 17 and 16 million, is not a statistically significant /majority/, please be careful when quoting, because you missed the most important piece of what I said above.

17 million as compared to 16 million is not 'a large quantity' more as compared to 16 million.

If you understand that 'most' is the superlative form of 'much' or 'many' you understand that you're saying there is a large amount (more) of iDevices being sold as compared to the number of iPhones being sold, when all things considered that number is less 10%! Hardly a supermajority and very much in the realm of "simple majority."

I brought this up on Freenode in ##English. They were absolutely appalled by your claim, "half plus one is most."

If you have further questions I highly recommend the erudite discussions they can provide. They are quite well versed in English grammar and usage, I think you will find their comments instructive.

Edit: Also I took the liberty of consecrating the discoveries made in the form of a blog post --> http://voxinfinitus.net/blog/articles/2011/01/usage-most

Not the way it's used in day-to-day casual language.

If your boss told you that you would be getting "not all, but most of your bonus this year" and you got half plus one dollars (or whatever you're paid in), chances are you'd be feeling cheated, no matter how 'technically right' your boss was.

It was used in conjunction with exact numbers in this case, that’s just not a casual context.

It's a majority, certainly. But isn't it more elucidating to say sales are nearly split between the iPhone and iOS devices other than the iPhone?

'Most', at least colloquially, seems slightly misleading to me. The difference after all is less than 10%.

No, not in this context. "Most iOS devices are not iPhones" is an accurate statement. It's also accurate in attempting to get the point across: iOS doesn't necessarily mean iPhone, and that iPhone isn't the only source of iOS platform that should be considered.

It's like the idea of significant. All too often, people confuse significant with majority. This is not the case. Significant rarely means majority, except when used in the all too cumbersome "significant majority".

Finally, most people would agree even a 5% different is a significant difference. =)

Regardless, saying ~5% is more instructive than simply saying 'most', which might confuse people who aren't reading closely or if it becomes quoted out of context. It's poor form to miss an opportunity to be more specific about data rather than less.

“It's poor form to miss an opportunity to be more specific about data rather than less.”

I don’t agree at all. It’s usually a good idea to summarize data and in the process of doing so being less specific. Most is perfectly understandable in the context. It actually is very surprising and interesting that most iOS devices that were sold in the last quarter are not phones so saying just that is perfectly fine.

There is no strange and arbitrary 5% condition for the usage of most and there never has been. Most is an exact term.

$6 billion profit on almost $27 billion revenue... that's almost 50% YTD. That's insane. And 62% of that from outside the US.

Say whatever you want about Apple, but they know how to print money.

they also know how to sit on that money as well... which has quite a few investors pretty antsy.

I think that, for now, their $130 share gain in the last 52 weeks is more than making up for it.

They can talk dividends when their shares are near Microsoft's level and their product pipeline is less stacked and hype machine is dying.

I'm re-reading Peter Lynch's classic "One up on Wall Street" at the moment. He's a big advocate of share buybacks over dividends (unless Apple can some up with something else to do with the cash.) Warren Buffett is also.

Buybacks reduce the number of shares outstanding in the market and thereby increase earnings per share, which boosts the share price, rewarding existing investors. So we may see Apple engage in buybacks.

We probably won't see buybacks and dividends any time soon. Apple remembers the days when they almost went bankrupt and that has set the tone for how they manage financially. They are very conservative with their cash.

They have made it very clear that they are reserving that cash for a big acquisition. IMHO that means that they are waiting for the moment when someone innovates in a way that threatens them and they can bring the talent and assets aboard. Like the Google process, except you pay with cash.

Buybacks are much preferable, IMO. They only create a tax liability for the shareholder when the shares are sold, as opposed to dividends which are taxed the year they're disbursed.

That's the idea of buybacks but there's no guarantee it will result in an increased share price. Take Cisco for example, by the end of this year they will have made around $82 Billion in buybacks while their stock has remained flat over the past 10 years.

I know! And the amazing thing is just to think about how relevant this is to Hacker News! Because when I think, gee, I wonder what technology Mega Corp is raking in the billions, this it the very first site that comes to mind!

Noteworthy: Apple "analyst" Gene Munster predicted 4.3 million iPads sold in 2010. (http://read.bi/cYCppW)

Actual results: 7.33 million just last quarter.

Mr. Munster gets quite a lot wrong. I am starting to think make a site to solely catalog and score predictions by analysts would be a pretty popular public service.

"I am starting to think make a site to solely catalog and score predictions by analysts would be a pretty popular public service."

Philip Elmer DeWitt at Apple 2.0 already has you covered, every quarter he rounds up all the analysts' predictions and after actual results are announced, he writes about the outliers. He also tracks how often the analysts are right/wrong.

Apple Q1 2011 earnings preview: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/18/apple-q1-2011-earning...

please do this.

Well, the whois for claimchowder.com is pretty interesting....

This is a frequent recurring theme on daring fireball. Doesn't he know the Panic guys?

http://daringfireball.net/search?q=claim+chowder

14.79 Million iPads sold since the April 2010 release. I think the term 'hotcakes' applies.

Why single him out? When iPad was finally shown in January the notion that it would not sell more than a few million, tops, was very widespread among analysts and most of the tech press.

Hell, people were giving Leo Laporte a hard time because he came in with one of the highest estimates, at (I think) over 5 million.

His name is pretty memorable and he seems to show up quite a lot when people want an "expert" opinion on Apple.

"Analysts" who go contrarian on Apple are fairly common, and they have spent the past decade being wrong. At this point low-balling Apple has become so common that I think a lot of analysts do this just in case they manage to draw the lucky lottery ticket and "predict" a miss by Apple -- if they are correct their prediction stands out and when they are wrong they just get filed into the long, long list of bad Apple predictions.

If they are correct then their prediction is still just part of the long, long list. Why would it stand out?

Watching the Apple share price graph over the course of 7 days starting with Steve's step down announcement yesterday through the earnings call today is going to be a really interesting exercise on timing bad news.

"Watching the Apple share price graph over the course of 7 days starting with Steve's step down announcement yesterday through the earnings call today is going to be a really interesting exercise on timing bad news."

Word on the street is that Jobs had already shown up less at Apple in the last few weeks, the announcement was obviously timed to coincide with a bank holiday.

But, if Apple's quarterly results turned out lower than Apple's guidance and the Street's expectations, I bet Jobs' sick leave would have been announced at an earlier date, so that the two shocks wouldn't have amplified one another.

(Instead, at today's closing bell Apple's stock was back to the level of a couple days a go. An hour later, when Apple's Q1 results were in, trading actually went up to an unprecedented height. So Apple's cunning plan worked out quite nicely.)

I couldn't help but notice the timing too. Steve steps out just as Apple is about to post phenomenal earnings: smart moves on Apple's part I think.

If Steve is really sick then it's probably just a coincidence. He's a genius but not god.

Yes, it probably is just a coincidence that Steve Jobs' illness recurs just when Apple profits are this high.

But on a more fine grained timescale a few days more or less in the timing of the announcements might make quite a difference in how people perceive this. If they had announced a month ago instead of right next to record quarterly earnings it might have hurt the stock more at the time than it does today.

The market is in theory 'efficient', but in the short term it tends to overreact to bad news, so combining bad news with extremely good news may be a viable method to offset the effect of the bad news on the stock.

Savvy investors will have priced Steve Jobs health in to their stock holdings already, those that are on edge might panic and sell unless there was a second factor.

16 million iPhones over 90 days is 178,000 / day.

This is getting down to near half Android's claim of 300,000 / day (not all phones, but one would presume nearly all).

Of course, add in the other iOS devices and Apple is back in front, but it's interesting to see how far behind Android they are in the phone market now.

Google claims carriers are activating 300,000 Android devices a day. The Apple figure you mentioned is of actual hardware sales, limited to phones. I'm not sure whether the two figures are comparable.

In any case, sales volume for the entire platform is more interesting to developers, as an iPhone app will also work on iPhone touch and iPad. Combining sales of all iOS devices that allow 3rd party apps, Apple sold 375,000 a day in the last quarter. (33.57m/90)

What I found especially interesting in today's conference call was the figure for iOS' installed base: 160 million. Android has a long way to go.

That claim was also made during the middle of the holiday season. I'd wager activations have cooled off since then.

Right, and the numbers themselves are kind of dubious, too:

On Dec 6, Andy Rubin blogged that there were 200,000 activations a day. On Dec 8, Andy Rubin tweeted there were 300,000 activations a day.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-s-w...

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/08/andy-rubin-google-act...

Really? Android is on every carrier. iPhone at the moment is only on At&t. If the iPhone were on all carriers the way Android is, Android almost certainly wouldn't be so far ahead. Hence... the iPhone is headed to Verizon. Let's follow up in a year and see where things are at then. Also, Android is on dozens of devices at different prices points. There have only been 4 iPhones... it's Apples to Oranges (pun intended). And anyways... Android isn't hurting the iPhone, it's hurting Blackberry: http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/11/for-every-att-android-user-...

I don't disagree with much that you say. There are many explanations for Android's success - some of them are due to characteristics of Android (openness, more power and flexibility, Google branding and services integration, etc), others are due to failures of Apple(carrier exclusivity). These things help explain it but they don't change the facts of it.

You take a similar line about Android - eg: why did Google not support an iPod Touch like devices? We could say, "sure, iOS looks more successful than Android overall but that's just because Google doesn't support non-phone devices yet" - perhaps it explains why Android doesn't have overall more market share yet, but it doesn't change that facts of the situation - in overall marketshare iOS wins hands down.

The earnings call started a few minutes ago...

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq111/

By the way, not one question about the health of Steve Jobs.

One would hope that his last sentence regarding his and his family's privacy would be respected.

I am happy for them. Apple is a company that puts design and user experience at the front and they get rewarded for it. I see their revenue as generated by genuine consumer appreciation compared to the generic ad revenue that other companies generate.

They obviously knew that this would bump the stock price up, which is why Steve's step-down announcement was timed to effect the market on the same day.

very good strategic planning. Releases the report right after Steve Jobs steps down, I am pretty positive that Steve Jobs knew this report, thus knowing that it'll be safe to step down with this type of amazing results being reported to the public

The value of Apple soon surpasses the GDP of Sweden.

Phenomenal. I'm not sure I can put together a comment that's much more than that.

They're hitting $1000 share price this year. :-)

I hope not, that would kill their P/E ratio.

Apple is simply printing money now. Remarkable financial success.

It is notable that between Q4 2010 and Q1 2011 (the latter includes the holiday season), the growth areas were the iPod [115%] and the iPad [75%]. Macs increased 6%, but actually decreased by 7% in the Americas.

It's hard to hold it as a "bad" result, but among such stellar results the relatively small 15% growth of the iPhone does stand out. Tomorrow the talking heads will probably play that up despite the incredible scale of these results.

It's really hard to look at quarter to quarter numbers and say that it's good or bad when you have the holiday buying season involved. It's better to look Year on Year (except for the iPad)

There's also different bits of the product lifecycle to consider. Ipods were refreshed in September, (probably in anticipation of the holidays), but they're down year on year. Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime. (except for that whole verizon thing). Ipads should be mostly flatish, since world + dog expects a refresh in April. The fact that the ios devices aren't flat is saying that there's a huge demand for these things that hasn't been filled yet.

>Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime.

I wouldn't expect that, at least not this year in the US. The iPhone goes non-exclusive here in a week or so as it hits Verizon stores. Most people are expecting a big jump in sales from Verizon customers who wanted iPhones but didn't want to switch to AT&T.

Also:

1) During the conference call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated [1] that Apple still can't handle demand for iPhone and they continually have to increase production.

2) Apple keeps adding partnerships with operators in various countries, the US is just a piece of the pie. They currently have agreements with 185 operators in 90 countries, but that's probably not even half of the major operators out there.

3) Sales are growing fastest in the Asia-Pacific region and Japan. IPhone sales doubled year over year in those regions and I doubt that's going to slow down, also because of Apple's marketing efforts there. For instance, Apple plans to open another dozen Apple Stores in China in 2011. It was also stated that the China retail stores are the ones with the highest revenue per store.

[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/157196/2011/01/apple_financi...

You missed the parenthesis. (except for the whole verizon thing)

I would expect certain parts of the IOS ecosystem to be flatish based on the product cycles. They're apparently undergoing a runaway chain reaction instead, without a corresponding change to the average sale prices to engage that part of the demand curve.

Therefore, there's a hell of a pentup demand, and we ain't seen nothing yet.

It's better to look Year on Year (except for the iPad)

Sure, but in this case the input in question is the renewed competition courtesy of Android. The natural question everyone will have is how that impacts the iPhone.

For reference, for the same quarter over quarter of 2009, iPhone sales increased 68%.

Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime

I wouldn't expect this at all. While we might get a sense that everyone is like us, most consumers aren't planning their purchase around Apple's update cycle. They decide they want a smartphone so they go and buy one. We all know that the smartphone market is exploding, and there is a huge untapped reserve of potential customers, so the numbers now are generally big.

Regardless, the iPad and iPod more than make it up. While everone was talking about the 300,000 Android devices activated per day, over this quarter the combined iOS devices hit a simple division rate of almost 360,000 per day. That is amazing.

Not 300000 "Android devices" - 300000 Android "Phones". You are comparing Phones vs. Phones+Media Players+Tablets.

In the last quarter, 375,000 iOS devices were sold a day. Are you saying 75,000 Android media players and tablets are sold a day? Otherwise, Android is still not growing as fast as iOS.

If you are talking iOS devices then adding all of the Android ones here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices will give you an idea that it is easily possible to come out more than 75000 a day, although hard numbers for many of those devices are not available as Google doesn't activate them or doesn't count them in their "Phone" numbers as they are not phones.

// No, I don't think there are 22.5m Android media players and tablets sold a month.

Samsung recently announced that Galaxy Tab, the most popular Android tablet, hit the 1 million mark. [1] Sales of Android devices by Archos, Meizu and B&N -- even when combined -- are flat-out negligible compared to Apple's sales volume.

I'd be surprised if there are more than 5 million non-phone Android devices sold a month. Also keep in mind that the "300,000 Android phone activations a day" is not at all verified, let alone that it applies to the present. Even if the figure was correct, it may well have pertained to a peak during the holiday season.

[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199678/Update_Galaxy...

EDIT: My math was off. 30*75k=2.25m, not 22.5m. So yes, I have to agree, there may be non-phone Android sales of over 75k a day.

22.5M? where 1M=1000000? 5M per month = 150000 per day by my late night calculations :)

You're absolutely right, I stand corrected.

Sure, but the Android tablet + media player market has been generally a giant bust thus far. A tonne of vapor, but very little action. I think that was a strategic failing on Google's part, as they intentionally kept criteria that crippled those markets while iOS was spreading far and wide (and that's all that really matters to a game developer).

Curious - If you add the Million+ Galaxy Tabs sold and every other manufacturer that sells Android like the Archos, B&N Nook Color, Chinese Androids(ZTE, Meizu) (see here for more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices ) then where does the Android vs iOS equation stand? There is no point in playing the Android vs iOS game if you include all iOS devices. The only meaningful/hard numbers available for Android are for SmartPhones - so Android SmartPhones vs. iOS SmartPhone is the only comparison you could validly make.

> The only meaningful/hard numbers available for Android are > for SmartPhones - so Android SmartPhones vs. iOS SmartPhone > is the only comparison you could validly make.

Why so? If I am a developer and my app runs the same on iPhone and iPod touch (and probably on iPad if I took time to make it universal) then I care not only about the iPhones.

Same applies for Android apps - your app will work on all Phones, Tablets, Media Players and what not with all the same caveats. So you either need to compare Android Phone to iOS Phones OR Android Phones+Media Players+Tablets with iPhones+iPod+iPad - that was the point.

Non iPhone devices account for more than the half of iOS devices sold if you count iPad, and ~40% if you don't. What percentage of non-phone Android devices is compared to phones?

It is not possible to know - Google maintains a number of phones per day figure that only applies to Phones that are "with Google" phones which users activate using their Google accounts. Per the Android model, if a vendor makes a phone or tablet or Media Player without involving Google (and plenty do) then Google doesn't know about how many of those are sold. So if you are comparing the 300000 number Google put out - that is only valid for SmartPhones. You can club other categories but since there are no numbers (yet) for those categories of Android devices the comparison is not apples to apples. (See below posts for more data on how it is easy to see if you include most conservative numbers for the other categories, Android easily beats iOS at this number game)

I think they Galaxy Tabs are already counted as a consequence of them going for the "big phone" approach before Google relaxed their requirments for the market. (They've since announced Tabs with only Wifi and an iPod Touch-alike called the Galaxy Player).

As Zero mentioned, Galaxy Tab's count in Google's numbers. Google publishes numbers for devices that access the market, which is essentially every non-intentionally crippled device. They don't give the number just for smartphones, it just happens that it was overwhelmingly smartphones. The Nook might run Android, but unless the user roots it (which a vanishingly small percentage do) it doesn't operate as a normal Android device.

Google clearly says 300000 "Phones" and the Galaxy Tab cannot make calls. And they have no way to give you numbers that they can't count - so they aren't selectively giving you phone numbers - the other big part of Android is not tied to Google activation system and so there is no way for them to know. (Nook _is_ Android - 2.1 version to be specific - whether or not Apps are allowed to run on default version is not relevant.)

I guess where you are getting at is Android == Google and nothing else and it is somehow OK to compare Phone numbers to 3 separate categories put together because of your assumption that Android=Phones=Google. That's clearly not true but I guess from the down voting that I am disturbing a good number of fans with numbers so don't be worried - pick the number that makes you happy ;)

How do the holidays come into play if you look at numbers like that? iPods have always spiked tremendously in the holiday quarter and iPads might be similar while the iPhone might be less of a Christmas present. Is there some way to normalize the data?

Good question. If you look at Apple's revenue by product line [1], it does appear that iPad is following the same seasonality as iPhone sales. That means that sales spike in FQ1 and the other quarters are roughly similar. It looks like iPad sales in FQ2 will be about 5 million, slightly higher than FQ4-2010 [2].

Even though the iPad is on a refresh pattern two months earlier than iPhone, I don't think it's going to hamper performance for FQ2, especially since enterprise makes up an increasingly large part of sales.

[1] http://images.macworld.com/images/news/graphics/157242-corre...

[2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/10/18results.html

Q/Q iPhone growth isn't that meaningful because they've been supply constrained. What you're actually seeing in that growth figure is how fast they've been able to grow iPhone production.

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