Samsung announced today that it has sold 10 million Galaxy S4 phones in the first month. This amounts to a rate of about four phones sold per second. JK Shin, CEO of the IT and Mobile Communications Division at Samsung, said, “On behalf of Samsung, I would like to thank the millions of customers around the world who have chosen the Samsung Galaxy S4. At Samsung we’ll continue to pursue innovation inspired by and for people.”
The media is full of accolades for Samsung, often repeated are the statistics provided by Samsung, “The Galaxy S4 sets a new record for Samsung, generating sales quicker than any of its predecessors. Sales of the Galaxy S III reached the 10-million mark 50 days after its launch in 2012, while the Galaxy S II took five months and the Galaxy S seven months to reach the same milestone.”
It is interesting to note that the media is eating from Samsung’s hands in contrast to how the media treated Apple AAPL when iPhone 5 was released. When Apple announced that five million iPhone 5s were sold in three days the media was full of negative stories about disappointing Apple sales.
There was a time when Apple was media’s darling and could do no wrong, and then the media turned against Apple. In the media. just like the stock market, it is a game of expectations and not of absolute numbers.
An interesting example from today is Hewlett-Packard HPQ. HP reported earnings after the market close yesterday. It reported EPS of $0.87 vs. consensus of $0.81 for the second quarter but revenues were $27.6 billion vs. consensus of 28.12 billion. For fiscal year 2013 HP projected EPS of $3.50 to $3.60 vs. consensus of $3.49….Read more at Forbes