Why I don’t believe the major companies mobile phone sales figures

How can anyone justify spending around $1,500AUD ($900US plus the Australia tax) for a phone? When so called ‘experts’ are saying the latest Google Chromebook, a laptop, is too expensive at the same price, how can they then recommend the latest iPhone, Huawei or Pixel handset?

Because writing about mobile phones is sexy and if you are popular enough they probably send you a free one to review.

Unfortunately I’m in the category of ‘sanity’ and not sexy so no free phones for me. I also wonder at people who bemoan the shortcomings of a $500 laptop yet apparently spend three times that much on something smaller, slower and with fewer functions.

That is why the sales figures quoted (20 million Huawei phones sold in three months) I say are unbelievable, and plain wrong.

Can people really be that stupid? I still have the same phone I purchased three years ago. Yes I would like a new one but I’m also not a rich idiot with $1,500 to throw away for something that does essentially the same thing, only slightly faster.

Look at me, I spend $1,500 a year to not make phone calls. There are around 60 million (estimated total handset sales) of these people every three months? I sincerely doubt it.

It is like buying lobster that tastes like chicken. Why not just buy chicken? Everyone is happy and you have one less mortgage.

The sales figures must be for those buying a phone for the first time, you say? But in a saturated market again the figures are way too high.

Maybe they shipped 20 million handsets to stores, but I bet half will be sent back when they don’t sell.

Please, tell me the world isn’t that crazy that they would buy them!??

Why are Tablets all 7-10 inches?? Yes, size does matter!!

And they wonder why overall tablet sales are declining!

Please, manufacturers, in much of the world we use A4 paper. All our documents are A4, our magazines, business documents and pretty much everything we want to read, without glasses like coke bottle bottoms, is in A4.

A4, for you are obviously unaware, is 14″ diagonally across.

Most of our phones are 5″ in size or over, so why would I pay up to $1,000 for a tablet only twice the size of my phone? Yes I know that measured diagonally it is actually more than twice, but I’m ranting here so give me a break.

Equally, the US market uses Letter (those funny people who refuse to go metric because it would somehow interfere with their masculinity, or something) so their Tablets should be 8.5″ x 11.5″.

Why is this so difficult??

If I walk into a meeting with all my documents on my tablet I do not want to spend my time apologising for the the small sized print and handing around magnifying glasses.

So give me a tablet that is the same size I have been looking at in business for the past several decades, not some small, so called ‘elegant’ sized tablet I can’t read because it was designed to “fit nicely in a small case or bag”.

Stuff the bag, that’s why I’m carrying a tablet, so I DON’T NEED a bag!

As always, either the entire world is bonkers or I am, and since I have been asking myself this question more often than not lately, it could go either way.

Am I crazy? People have said 14″ is too big for a tablet, but then they go into the newsagent and buy an A4 magazine to read.

And no, I don’t want a 14″ windows laptop. Windows is half my problem.

I have everything I need with the Google apps (which I protect like crazy and have three backups of, just because) such as spreadsheets, documents, presentations…all shrunk from A4 to make me feel blind, but it does fit into my jacket pocket.

That’s OK, I have arms, carrying one tablet (if it’s the right size!) is very doable.