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.