GM reports January U.S. sales up 22%. The trick? It's the same as Samsung's iPad-killer

My friend blbl sent me a link to this report about the Samsung iPad-killer a couple of days ago, the technique to boost sales and numbers consists to stuff the retail chain with boxes that so far remain unsold:


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Android sales, they say, are skyrocketing, taking market share away from the iPad. Except — for all the Android-powered slates you see around the electronics retailers, how many of your friends have one? One, a couple, none? I’m betting none based on statements today from a senior Samsung suit who said that while sales to retail channels are pretty good, actual sales to, you know, consumers — they’re small, “quite small“.

Now, think on this when you read these analyst reports, because I think this is the big difference: while Android tablets are indeed selling into sales channels they ain’t reaching much further into the food chain. Apple’s soon to be dominated iPad is, erm, probably out of stock.

So to the story (source WSJ via Business Insider): “On the earnings call with analysts, Samsung VP Lee Young-hee said sales were “quite small.”" So, it has shipped two million of these 7-inch iPad ‘killers’ to sales channels, but actual sales to consumers aren’t so hot.

“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.”

‘Quite OK‘? That’s the kind of phrase which you can imagine would easily roll off of any Apple execs lips, right? Could this be why Samsung’s giving over half its mobile processor manufacturing to Apple?

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Then I realised that it's probably something that's been going on in many industries, and not just the iPad, and that would be a very good explanation for all the "great" quarterly reports we have seen, in the face of massive unemployment, riots, bankruptcies and deleveraging.

(MarketWatch) -- General Motors Co. on Tuesday said January U.S. sales rose 21.8% to 178,896 cars and trucks. Excluding discontinued brands, sales of GM's four core nameplates rose 23%. Fleet sales, which are less profitable than retail sales, dropped 7%. Retail sales jumped 36%. The Cadillac brand showed the biggest percentage increase, up 49% to 12,580 vehicles.

One could wonder how all the car manufacturers keep on increasing sales given the current economic conditions. Well, our friends at ZeroHedge answer the question:

GM has continued to shove a whopping 510,000 cars with dealers: In January 2011, the firm had 510k cars at its dealers, compared to just 390,000 in January 2010, a 30% increase. Furthermore, as the only component of consumer credit that is surging, non-revolving loans, indicates that virtually all car purchases are made based on the old formula of "no money down." And with the government backstopping both the car maker and the lender banks, we would be very interested in discovering just how bad the delinquency rate in non-revolving car debt is over the past year, especially as it relates to GM.

Nice one!