I think Apple fans watching the brawl between Cupertino and Samsung can sometimes just be confounded by what is going on. Why is Samsung taking a risk of alienating its biggest manufacturing customer just to release some crummy iPhone knockoffs? Madness, right?
Wrong. While not exactly ethical, Samsung is playing it smart: the Korean electronics giant knows that the potential margins on selling smartphones dwarf the margins on any parts it sells Apple. But the proof is in the pudding, so check this out: Samsung actually shipped more smartphones last quarter than Apple did.
The report comes via the Wall Street Journal, who cite a source saying that Samsung shpped 20 million smartphones in the quarter ending on September 30th, compared to Apple’s “disappointing” 17.1 million.
As far as numbers are concerned, then, Samsung’s strategy of aping the iPhone and iPad and shipping multiple iterations of each device every generation is paying off… just barely. Of course, Apple sold less iPhones than it normally would this quarter, and it’s worth noting that Samsung’s shipping many different smartphones compared to Apple’s two: the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. Still, these are the sorts of numbers Samsung was dreaming of when they first decided to risk alienating Apple with the first Galaxy smartphone.
