At least 234,000 Nokia 808 PureViews sold?

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AAS reader Sethu M Pillai has been doing some maths. Some fairly inspired maths, as it turns out, since he was determined to estimate the number of Nokia 808 PureViews sold so far, following my 'finger in the air' estimate of 'more than 100,000' in the comments of a news story. See his calculations below - a quarter of a million may not be much by iPhone 5 standards, but for such a specialist device on a 'dead' platform, it's not to be sneezed at...

Sethu writes:

I have attempted to conservatively estimate the number of 808s that were sold in Q3 based on the published numbers and Average Selling Prices (ASP).

Analyzing Q2 results (prior to 808 sales):

  • Total sales - 10,200,000
  • ASP - 151 Euros
  • Lumia sales - 4,000,000
  • Lumia ASP - 186 Euros
  • Inferrred Symbian sales - 6,100,000
  • Calculating Symbian ASP gives approximately 130 Euros.

Same analysis for Q3 results gives:

  • Symbian sales: 3,400,000
  • Calculated Symbian ASP = [ (Total sales volume * Total ASP) - (Lumia sales * Lumia ASP) ] / (Symbian Sales) = approx 150 Euros.

Symbian prices for non-808 phones have been on a declining trend. But conservatively, let us assume the ASP for non-808 smartphones have been maintained at even the Q2 levels of 130 Euros.

The Nokia 808 PureView's ASP around the world ranges from below 400 Euros (equivalent, in the US) to over 500 (in UK) Euros. Asian prices are somewhere in the middle and this is where most sales likely came from. Let's take, again, a conservative ASP at the Singapore price of around 420 Euros.

Thus, if 'n' is the number of 808s sold, we have:

[ 420n + 130(3,400,000 - n) ] / 3,400,000 = (Calculated Symbian ASP of) 150

Solving that equation, we get n = 234482.7586

Thus, the most conservative estimate of Nokia 808 sales is 234,482.

Nice thinking there. The use of 'conservative' estimates throughout rather indicates that the actual number of 808 PureViews sold exceeds a quarter of a million, slightly more than I'd guessed. In fact, we can add on to this number the 808s sold in October 2012 so far, so perhaps 300,000. There are quite a few PureView-using users 'out there', it seems.

What do you think of Sethu's maths and the overall number sold?