Did Apple really ship 90.1M iPhones (like IDC claims) last quarter?

No.

Let's take a closer look.

IDC, and other industry research firms like IDC, love to publish these market share tables because they are like catnip to blogs / sites / publications. Everything you need to craft various narratives is found in one chart. The problem is the numbers aren't accurate (in my view).

IDC & peers rely on "proprietary" methods for deriving unit sales estimates. I've reached out to them for additional explanation. They ignore me. (Hi IDC!) My suspicion is it's a mix of customer surveying, which are useless, and calling up "friends" at mobile carriers & retailers

Let's look at IDC's 90.1M iPhone sales estimate for Apple. Sounds like a big number. "Biggest quarter ever for a smartphone vendor" IDC says. Such a compelling story. Here's the problem. Apple gave us iPhone revenue: $65.6B. Apple also told us iPhone ASP increased year-over-year.

For Apple to sell 90.1M iPhones worth $65.6B of revenue, iPhone ASP needed to be $728. That's a big red flag to me. It's way too low. Apple increased iPhone pricing with the iPhone 12 starting at $799. iPhone 12 Pro goes for $999/$1,099. Apple told us iPhone 12 Pro sold very well

Let's go back to Apple saying iPhone ASP went up year-over-year. If you look at IDC's estimates, they have iPhone ASP going down year-over-year ($758 in FY1Q20 to $728 in FY1Q21). That's wrong. I don't think IDC actually listened to Apple's earnings call.

IDC should issue a correction and update their estimates to reflect Apple's disclosures and commentary. They won't though as it would place doubt around their "proprietary" method for coming up with estimates, which their clients pay big money for.

What's the takeaway here? IDC and other industry research firms need to be ignored. Their estimates aren't accurate, as demonstrated in this thread. If their Apple estimates are off by this much, how accurate do you think their non-Apple estimates are?

By the way, iPhone ASP was closer to $800 last quarter. Implies unit sales of around 80M, not 90M. A 10M unit sales difference for one quarter is like the Grand Canyon for a financial analyst.

And if you think IDC's problem was just found with estimating iPhone unit sales, IDC's estimate for Mac unit sales last quarter: 49%.

Apple's actual results implied Mac unit sales growth was more like 20%.

What a joke. There is no other way to describe being off by that much.