Boot up: iPhone 5 cuts explained, VCs for crapware, GPS v UTC, and more - The Guardian (blog)

Cnet was very excited about Samsung's announcement that the Galaxy S phone line had crossed the 100 million mark in total sales. The phone is so desirable, "Sales of the flagship Galaxy S3 reached 30m units in 5 months, and 40m in 7 months, with average daily sales of about 190,000 units." You'd think that it's the hottest thing going with those numbers. Of course, as we were just discussing above, in the quarter just ended, Apple will have sold about as many iPhone 5?s as Samsung has sold Galaxy S3?s in 7 months! This is what the "experts" are already calling trouble and they haven't seen the numbers yet.

Now, of course, Samsung is also selling the prior generation S2, which Cnet tells us, "...is described as a steady bet after recording sales of over 40 million in 20 months." So that's about 2m a month for that model to go with the 17m S3 phones Samsung apparently moved in Q3. In other words, if we just compare the last two generations of phones, Apple sold somewhere around 35-45m last quarter while Samsung moved about 23m. It's certainly true that Samsung has a number of less-expensive entry models and will outsell Apple in raw numbers. But when one looks at "profit share" and wonders why Apple will continue to earn more of it in smartphones than Samsung, those numbers tell the story.