Quote:
Originally Posted by SensualPoet
Yes, Amazon might well share sales figures with IDC confidentially or provide "guidance" as they do to market analysts in leading financial research houses. IDC also surveys tens of thousands of consumers quarterly asking detailed questions about things like which brand e-reader they recently bought.
Calling their work "pure guesswork" is silly or worse, deliberately misleading, as there is good data supporting their findings, some of it confidential inside info, some of it gleaned from consumers surveys, some of it gleaned from supplier reports, etc. There is some art in the final numbers, but its mainly science. The numbers are not "guessed at" arbitrarily.
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Ok, they make not be pure guesswork, but they are a guess. There is no way that Sony sells less then B&N given that Sony sells outside the USA and B&N does not. Regardless of how hey get their numbers, it's still guessing in the long run. And polls can tend to be way way way off base. In a poll, take 100 people and you might find most own a nook of some kind. You might also find mos own a Kindle or a Sony. It just depends on the people being polled. If the numbers are correct and say that the Kindle is #1, I can show you a poll on MR that says that Sony is #1. So really, polls are rather useless in regards to what reader is #1. As for units sold from the suppliers, do these numbers take into account stock not sold from the device makers?