Report: Samsung Lied About Tablet Sales

It looks as though Samsung is in hot water again. A recently released internal document showed the company purposefully misled the public by saying its Galaxy tablets were outselling the competition, making it seem as though the public was losing interest in the Apple (AAPL) iPad.

The fraudulent behavior was unveiled via an internal Samsung document from February 2012, which Apple used as part of its testimony in the two tech giants’ ongoing suit, according to iDownloadBlog. The document, which was labeled “Top Secret,” apparently contained a memo proving Samsung tablets were, in reality, far outsold by the competition back in 2011, including Barnes and Nobles’ Nook reader.

The document showed that Samsung sold about a million tablets in the United States during 2011, compared to the iPad’s 17.4 million units domestically and 32 million globally. iDownloadBlog postulates that the incorrect numbers were the result of media sloppiness after a Strategy Analytics report bungled the Galaxy tablet’s initial shipment numbers (Strategy Analytics is a customer of Samsung). What's more, Samsung’s sales figures historically have been based upon shipping estimates vs. the number of units actually put into the hands of end users.

With the controversy surrounding Samsung in the past few months, this latest revelation seems to be yet another reason to take the company’s Android tablet sales figures with a grain of salt. If the allegations of Samsung’s dishonesty are true, they don't put Samsung in a good light. They do, however, reinforce just how powerful Apple is as one of the biggest smartphone and tablet vendors in the world.

What do you think of these allegations about Samsung? Sign off in the comments below and be sure to let us know what you think as we continue to follow the drama in Apple and Samsung’s patent infringement proceedings.