How “big” is the Dingoo, and how much “bigger” can it get, really?

It might be worthwhile to explore the above questions, based on the “facts” available to date.

Stats

Source

Oldest webpage which mentions the Dingoo A320 I can find Dated 30 Jan 2009 http://blog.livedoor.jp/geek/archives/50799703.html
Earliest Dealextreme forum post about Dingoo A320 Dated 9 Feb 2009 http://www.dealextreme.com/forums/Forums.dx/Forum.20217~threadid.270041
Assuming export sales commenced after, say, 3 months of China only sales, the above would make the Dingoo about 9 months old Complete conjecture
Number of Dingoos claimed produced per month in China 30,000 Sofia (Dingoo Digital Rep, 14 March 2009), here
Assuming production for 9 months at this rate, total number of Dingoos produced, ever, as at today 270,000 Complete conjecture and high school maths
Number of completed Dingoo sales on ebay.com (21 May to 3 June 09) 10 sold Here
Number of Dingoos actually sold to people who bothered to click on the Dingoo Market Survey 445 Move eyeballs to right
Total number of registered users on A320 freeforum users 417 http://a320.freeforums.org/
Number of Dingoos presumably sold to people who hate clicking on surveys 269,555 Primary school maths
Number of viewers for most watched Dingoo video on Youtube 109,492 Here.
It’s this video, BTW.
Number of viewers for most watched video on Youtube with “Dingoo Linux” in title 4,321 Here. 
This video.
Number of original Booboo Linux Kernels downloaded since May 18 2009 137 Linux Google Code site
Number of Nintendo DS’s sold worldwide since launch (May 09) ~101,780,000 http://www.twice.com/article/CA6656921.html
Number of PSP’s sold worldwide since launch (Feb 09) ~50,000,000 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22302
Number of GP2x units sold since launch (31 Aug 08) ~60,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X
Number of Pandora’s apparently pre-sold ~3 to 4000 http://pandorawiki.org/FAQ#Only_3000.3F.21__What_if_they_sell_out.3F
Number of search results returned by Google for word “Dingoo” ~641,000 Here
Number of search results returned by Google for words “Nintendo DS” ~90,600,000 Here
Number of search results returned by Google for word “PSP” ~277,000,000 Here
Number of search results returned by Google for word “GP2Xx” ~3,360,000 Here

As the old saying goes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.  But let’s see what we can extrapolate from the above:

1. Where are the missing Dingoos? 445 accounted for via the survey; about 400 people at present are members of the A320 freeforum (presumably they already own, or are keen to buy); about 10 are sold every week or so on ebay.com.  I can’t see how these numbers can support a production rate of 30,000 per month – unless most of these are sold in  China.  Can anyone work out how many Dealextreme has shipped?

2. Knock a zero off Sofia’s claimed production (let’s assume her finger slipped), and the numbers make way more sense.  Say 3,000 produced a month, and 27,000 produced since release. 109,000 people have viewed a Youtube video on the product, preseumably researching it – a 25% ”conversion” rate from people researching to buying would be pretty respectable, and way more believable. 27,000 produced since release would of course make Dingoo a raging success compared against GP2x total sales of 60,000 in total, as Linux is only just bearing fruit on Dingoo.

3. At the rate of 30,000 per month, Dingoo would sell about 1,800,000 in 5 years.  This would still be mere statistical noise when compared against PSP/Nintendo sales over 5 years. And if we drop the zero, Dingoo would, in 5 years, sell 180,000 units v 100,000,000 NDS and 50,000,000 PSP units – less than 1% of either’s total sales! Anyway, we’ll take comfort that the 800 pound gorillas are in a different space than our lightweight Dingoo.

4. Compared against the GP2x, things get very interesting.  GP2x has apparently sold 60,000 units over about 3 years.  If Dingoo really sold 30,000 units a month, it would decimate GP2xover 3 years, with 1,080,000 units sold!  Drop a zero, and things get very interesting: 108,000 v 60,000 over 3 years.  Measured on this basis, Dingoo would be a pretty successful open emulator handheld.

5. Completely unscientifically: The NDS has sold roughly the number of Google search results it has in actual physical units! The PSP manages to “convert” Google search results into sales at a much lower rate, of about 5 search results for every 1 sale.  The GP2x is worse: 60,000 sales v 3,360,000 search results – 56 search results for every unit sold! If we assume then that there is some sort of relationship between number of search results and actual sales, with a minimum of 56:1 for GP2x and a maximum of 1:1 for NDS, we can come up with a figure which is bound to be completely wrong, but fun to work out nonetheless.  Let’s assume the profile of the Dingoo matches that of the GP2x: 56 search results for every physical sale.  This yields a total, as at today, of 11,446 Dingoo units sold - about 1,300 units a month sold to date.  The lower end numbers appear to me much more believable and consistent with the Western “scene” statistics.  But then again, we don’t know about what’s happening in China.

6. Of 417 A320 freeforum members, about 5 perhaps are regularly posting about Linux. I’d count another 8 or so on the Spanish GP2x forums.  About 137 people have downloaded the Linux kernel.  So, at least ~10-15% of Linux kernel downloaders are actively tinkering with it. Check back on the Google code download numbers regularly! It’s the key to monitoring how fast Booboo Linux takes off.

Comments

  1. You should include the term "Chinavision" as well as the "Dingoo" Google searches. My first exposure to the Dingoo was a blog posting about the Chinavision CVFH-N03-4G.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really wonder when Linux will finally be dual-booted. It's nice to see day-to-day progress, but I'm really really anxious. And what about the g-menu port? Will that be finished?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I dont think the ebay stats are right. I purchased mine off ebay on 5/24 and its not listed up there. Also most ppl buy there's from Dealextreme, I almost did but I had a 15% off coupone wiht my next ebay purchase with paypal and the seller was offering free EMS to USA so I got my dingoo for $84 shipped and had it 7 days later it came today =P. Also like SuccessHK also sells the dingoo and they are a pretty large retailer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How come the largest community based dingoo website, dingoo-digital.com wasn't mentioned?

    ReplyDelete
  5. wow dude!, you've got plenty free time, seriously.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Amgat, let us know: how many registered users on Dingoo-digital? No numbers are apparent on the site. Any other stats you would like to share? (Apart from "Number of huge boobies on Avatars: 2"):)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dingoo-digital started out nice, but it seems to keep up very slowly with news, no more custom firmware (which was actually just renaming stuff) and the forums at a320.freeforums.org are more active. As far as I'm concerned it's loosing it's community value rapidly.

    ReplyDelete
  8. There was no stats obviously, so a request was made: http://dingoo-digital.com/forums/general-talk/how-many-users

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dingoo A380 Review

Mancala for Dingux released (Mandingoo was released in 1975)

Idiot’s Guide to installing Dingux using Windows released

An interview with the creator of the Tauon PC-1, Volodymyr Mishin

How to show all your 17,083 c64 games from the c64 romset (archive.org) on the C64 Mini or C64 Maxi loader

Tauon PC-1 review

Dingoo representative at a320.freeforums.org !

The Dingoo-Scene JXD S7800B (Rockchip 3188 SoC) Android Gaming Console Review