4 ms·

The author addresses that in the article: "There’s a lot of talk of “channel-stuffing” which ignores a salient fact: electronics retailers aren’t in business f

by gareim 15y ago

The author addresses that in the article: "There’s a lot of talk of “channel-stuffing” which ignores a salient fact: electronics retailers aren’t in business for their health. Carrying inventory costs money, and non-performing product categories aren’t cut a lot of slack these days." And it makes sense. While there is probably some degree of channel stuffing going on, retail stores are not going to keep buying tablets that aren't selling at all because they'll just lose money.

po 15y ago
I see that in the article and I don't agree that it makes sense. The whole article is premised on an analyst who reports numbers of 'shipments' (compared to Apple 'shipments' which are actually sales numbers). The simplest explanation is channel stuffing so I think he has to come up with a good explanation why it isn't. He is saying 50% of android is probably nook and/or kindle and he's trying to find the other 50%... What they can’t do in the absence of actual sell-through is induce the retailer to dramatically increase his exposure. Android retailers have been doing that. Where does he get that from? Couldn't another explanation for the rise in shipments year-over-year be that more retailers are getting into the game? These are global numbers and the market is expanding. Retailers don't make that much margin on iPads so they really want to have some other tablets on hand to put up next to the iPad. One datapoint he talks about is the HP touchpad. Last year news reports said Best Buy took delivery of almost 300,000 units and sold less than 10%. That counts as 300k units shipped. So right there we have one great example of channel stuffing going on... and keep in mind that the retail stores aren't buying the tablets. BestBuy didn't take a bath on that, they push the loss back onto HP. Why not take shipment of the next 300k duds from HP or Motorola or wherever? Having inventory is bad for a company, but it's not so bad if you can charge it back to the manufacturer if it doesn't sell. I'm just saying I think channel stuffing is the simplest solution to the missing tablets problem. I'm not going to worry about where the tablets are going until I see someone quoting the sales figures.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  Remember, channel stuffing can't stay a secret forever. Android tablets have been on the market a while. Even if a manufacturer takes returns, unlike HP, at some point they either have to sell the tablet or take the loss. Other than RIM, I haven't heard of any manufacturers writing down tablets on the scale that would be required to sustain channel stuffing.
  - po 15y ago
    That's true but there are a lot of warehouses in the distribution channel and they could very well be sitting there. Companies can keep write-downs off their books for a while. I remember there was at least one accusation by Lenovo that Samsung was doing it with the Galaxy Tab at the end of last year: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/02/samsung-galaxy-tab http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/02/samsung-gal...
- fpgeek 15y ago
  For that matter, in my opinion, he isn't really talking about the traditional electronics retail channel anyway. To me, the big "mystery of the Android tablets is the crappy junk you find on sale at drugstores, Bed, Bath & Beyond and who knows where else. I can't think of any reason to buy that junk, but they do keep stocking them and getting newer models (from fly-by-night companies that would go bankrupt if they evem thought about channel stuffing), so someone must be buying them. Is there just an endless supply of people willing and interested in trying out a $99 piece of junk? And the junk does keep getting better. There was a time, pre-iPad, when the baseline was Cupcake or worse. Now it is Froyo or Gingerbread, with ICS on the horizon...
  - po 15y ago
    I'll give you that. I think that is happening a significant amount too. I would even go so far as to speculate that a small but significant (and a much, much smaller percentage than Android) number of iPads are bought as a novelty and don't see much real use. The difference is that Apple makes good margin on that. From the perspective of a healthy platform, active users, or as an app developer, that's effectively a non-sale.
- spiralpolitik 15y ago
  Keeping in mind that Amazon has never released sales figures (apart from "its selling well") for any version of the Kindle so basically they are pulling numbers out of the air for that. Samsung stopped reporting their sales numbers "due to competitive issues" last summer so once again they are pulling numbers out of the air for that. Until the Android vendors man up and report actual sales then any comparison is meaningless. Meanwhile we have at least 2 cases of manufactures taking baths on their tablet stocks (RIM and HP) after the stuffing the channel, Occams Razor would suggest that is the simplest reason. Keep in mind also that Raymond cherry picks his data to fit his model and has been strangely silent on the decline of Android's market share in Q4 last year.
fpgeek 15y ago
Exactly. That's what happened to the TouchPad. HP, presumably because of excessive optimisim, stuffed the channel past its breaking point. In response, the channel revolted and was going to return TouchPads en masse before HP decided on the fire sale instead. It is also worth noting that ASUS, one of the more successful Android tablet vendors, is doing the exact opposite. There were severe shortages of the Transformer after it launched and, from what I can tell, the Transformer Prime isn't easy to get either. I think ASUS is deliberately ramping up production slowly to match demand so they don't have problems with variants that flop (like the Slider).

by gareim 15y ago

po 15y ago

I see that in the article and I don't agree that it makes sense. The whole article is premised on an analyst who reports numbers of 'shipments' (compared to Apple 'shipments' which are actually sales numbers). The simplest explanation is channel stuffing so I think he has to come up with a good explanation why it isn't. He is saying 50% of android is probably nook and/or kindle and he's trying to find the other 50%... What they can’t do in the absence of actual sell-through is induce the retailer to dramatically increase his exposure. Android retailers have been doing that. Where does he get that from? Couldn't another explanation for the rise in shipments year-over-year be that more retailers are getting into the game? These are global numbers and the market is expanding. Retailers don't make that much margin on iPads so they really want to have some other tablets on hand to put up next to the iPad. One datapoint he talks about is the HP touchpad. Last year news reports said Best Buy took delivery of almost 300,000 units and sold less than 10%. That counts as 300k units shipped. So right there we have one great example of channel stuffing going on... and keep in mind that the retail stores aren't buying the tablets. BestBuy didn't take a bath on that, they push the loss back onto HP. Why not take shipment of the next 300k duds from HP or Motorola or wherever? Having inventory is bad for a company, but it's not so bad if you can charge it back to the manufacturer if it doesn't sell. I'm just saying I think channel stuffing is the simplest solution to the missing tablets problem. I'm not going to worry about where the tablets are going until I see someone quoting the sales figures.

fpgeek 15y ago
Remember, channel stuffing can't stay a secret forever. Android tablets have been on the market a while. Even if a manufacturer takes returns, unlike HP, at some point they either have to sell the tablet or take the loss. Other than RIM, I haven't heard of any manufacturers writing down tablets on the scale that would be required to sustain channel stuffing.
- po 15y ago
  That's true but there are a lot of warehouses in the distribution channel and they could very well be sitting there. Companies can keep write-downs off their books for a while. I remember there was at least one accusation by Lenovo that Samsung was doing it with the Galaxy Tab at the end of last year: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/02/samsung-galaxy-tab http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/02/samsung-gal...
fpgeek 15y ago
For that matter, in my opinion, he isn't really talking about the traditional electronics retail channel anyway. To me, the big "mystery of the Android tablets is the crappy junk you find on sale at drugstores, Bed, Bath & Beyond and who knows where else. I can't think of any reason to buy that junk, but they do keep stocking them and getting newer models (from fly-by-night companies that would go bankrupt if they evem thought about channel stuffing), so someone must be buying them. Is there just an endless supply of people willing and interested in trying out a $99 piece of junk? And the junk does keep getting better. There was a time, pre-iPad, when the baseline was Cupcake or worse. Now it is Froyo or Gingerbread, with ICS on the horizon...
- po 15y ago
  I'll give you that. I think that is happening a significant amount too. I would even go so far as to speculate that a small but significant (and a much, much smaller percentage than Android) number of iPads are bought as a novelty and don't see much real use. The difference is that Apple makes good margin on that. From the perspective of a healthy platform, active users, or as an app developer, that's effectively a non-sale.
spiralpolitik 15y ago
Keeping in mind that Amazon has never released sales figures (apart from "its selling well") for any version of the Kindle so basically they are pulling numbers out of the air for that. Samsung stopped reporting their sales numbers "due to competitive issues" last summer so once again they are pulling numbers out of the air for that. Until the Android vendors man up and report actual sales then any comparison is meaningless. Meanwhile we have at least 2 cases of manufactures taking baths on their tablet stocks (RIM and HP) after the stuffing the channel, Occams Razor would suggest that is the simplest reason. Keep in mind also that Raymond cherry picks his data to fit his model and has been strangely silent on the decline of Android's market share in Q4 last year.

fpgeek 15y ago

Exactly. That's what happened to the TouchPad. HP, presumably because of excessive optimisim, stuffed the channel past its breaking point. In response, the channel revolted and was going to return TouchPads en masse before HP decided on the fire sale instead. It is also worth noting that ASUS, one of the more successful Android tablet vendors, is doing the exact opposite. There were severe shortages of the Transformer after it launched and, from what I can tell, the Transformer Prime isn't easy to get either. I think ASUS is deliberately ramping up production slowly to match demand so they don't have problems with variants that flop (like the Slider).