Three of the big hitters in the tech game announced their latest quarterly figures overnight, and it was Korea's Samsung that came out with the most points in the press after hitting $7.4bn in Q3 profits.
That may be less than Apple's $8.2bn (and not £8.2bn as I suggested earlier today) but when it comes to analyst expectations, Samsung exceeded and Apple fell short, and that's what counts.
And there's no question it's Samsung's mobile division that's driving its profits – in fact, Strategy Analytics reckons Sammy shifted 57 million smartphones in the quarter – an all-time record.
For its part Apple will have no grumbles having sold 26.9m iPhones in Q3, which equates to a 17% global marketshare and a 57% year-on-year rise, apparently on the back of a strong sales summer in the US.
When it comes to tablets and the iPad, of course, Q3 has seen Apple's dominance come under renewed assault from Amazon's second-generation Kindle Fire and the new Kindle Fire HD.
So how is it going for the once book-seller turned online mega-corp? Hard to say – it's clearly going aggressive on its tablet division, which typically means sacrificing profits for sales.
But there's no way of sugar-coating the company's first quarterly losses since 2003, to the tune of $274m – albeit on healthy overall revenues of $13.81bn (up 27% on a year ago).
Or you'd think so anyway. That hasn't stopped Amazon trying: its press release announcing the results sees boss CEO Jeff Bezos announcing: “Our approach is to work hard to charge less. Sell devices near breakeven and you can pack a lot of sophisticated hardware into a very low price point.”
Fairly harmless stuff, to be fair, but then comes a spec-by-spec comparison of both Kindle Fire HD models versus the iPad mini, pointing out how both offer better resolution, pixel density, audio quality and – of course – price.
All of which may be true, but when it comes as part of a release to announce that you just lost money, it all seems just a little surreal.
