Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

ITG: Samsung Galaxy Tab return rate is 15% in the U.S.; iPad only 2%

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 7:01PM EST
BGR

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Acting as armed guards protecting the honor of the Queen, tech blogs and press across the Internet exploded in unison yesterday in an effort to right wrongs committed against the magical, and apparently peerless iPad. A report on Monday suggested that Android tablets — namely the Samsung Galaxy Tab — had finally put a dent in the iPad’s consumer tablet market share, causing it to drop from 96% to 77% last quarter. The firm issuing the report was immediately ambushed by the iPad army… those are shipments, not sales to end users, it cried. Of course Strategy Analytics, the firm behind the report, was indeed comparing apples to apples, of course, using Android tablet shipments as well as iPad shipments in its report.

As it turns out, however, Apple fans may have stumbled upon a more legitimate claim against Strategy Analytics’ report. Another study, this time conducted by ITG Investment Research, claims that the Galaxy Tab has an unusually high return rate. This, coupled with a vague comment from a Samsung executive, could mean that Samsung’s sell-out and retention figures for the Galaxy Tab are less than stellar. ITG Investment Research used data collected from almost 6,000 U.S. retailers from November through mid-January to determine that the Galaxy Tab has a high return rate.

The study found that 15% of Tabs purchased in the U.S. were ultimately returned. The only frame of reference offered by ITG’s study, as reported by the New York Post, is that only 2% of iPads sold through Verizon Wireless stores have been returned. In other words, these findings are based on sales of less than 18% of global Galaxy Tab shipments and iPads sold only by Verizon. Verizon Wireless is hardly thought to have received the bulk of the 7.3 million iPads Apple shipped last quarter, but 2% is of course an impressive return rate nonetheless. ITG also neglects to give any indication of the Galaxy Tab’s performance in markets outside the U.S., where an estimated 1.65 million out of Samsung’s 2 million Galaxy Tabs were shipped.

Read

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.