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Samsung's 'iPad-killer' heads to landfill

Android sales, they say, are skyrocketing, taking marketshare away from the iPad. Except — for all the Android-powered slates you see around the electronics retailers, how many of your friends have one? One, a couple, none? I’m betting none based on statements today from a senior Samsung suit who said that while sales to retail channels are pretty good, actual sales to, you know, consumers — they’re small, “quite small“.

Now, think on this when you read these analyst reports, because I think this is the big difference: while Android tablets are indeed selling into sales channels they ain’t reaching much further into the food chain. Apple’s soon to be dominated iPad is, erm, probably out of stock.

So to the story (source WSJ via Business Insider): “On the earnings call with analysts, Samsung VP Lee Young-hee said sales were “quite small.”” So, it has shipped two million of these 7-inch iPad ‘killers’ to sales channels, but actual sales to consumers aren’t so hot.

“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.”

Quite OK‘? That’s the kind of phrase which you can imagine would easily roll off of any Apple execs lips, right? Could this be why Samsung’s giving over half its mobile processor manufacturing to Apple?

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