iPhone sales vs Windows Mobile phone sales figures...

There have been several reports on the Internet quoting Microsoft's sales figure of 14.3 million Windows Mobile phones sold in 2nd half of 2007. This has been picked up by Windows fan sites such as Supersite for Windows and endorsed without any clarifications. Some observations :
1. Microsoft's figures are worldwide. Note that Apple only started selling iPhones in the UK and Germany half way through 2H of 2007. Whilst sales in France were in the last month of 2007. The figures quoted by Canalys only relate to the US market, which given the limited number of countries officially selling outside of the US, makes it more useful as a yard-stick indicator of growth :

Canalys estimates that Apple took 28% share of the fast growing US converged device market in Q4 2007, behind RIM’s 41%, but a long way ahead of third placed Palm on 9%. This was also enough to put Apple ahead of all Windows Mobile device vendors combined, whose share was 21% in the quarter according to Canalys figures.
Source : Canalys

2. The iPhone is a smartphone. Whilst Windows Mobile is used in Smartphones such as the Motorola Q; it is also sold in feature phones (or low end non-smartphones). Microsoft's figures only indicate the number of licenses sold for the period, and not the type of handsets it is deployed on.
3. Apple sell phones, not operating systems which are deployed on phones. Therefore, it is more useful to compare iPhone sales with other phones, and not Windows Mobile (the operating system).
4. Pundits and bloggers and tech journalists all seem to forget that Apple sell one handset. When it comes time to reporting facts and figures, this fact seems to be forgotten and the singular iPhone is compared to all of Nokia's handsets, or all RIM handsets, etc.
To summarise, Apple have sold 4 million units of a single model (iPhone) in the USA and 3 other European counties in a six month period. Compare that to entrenched mobile handset makers who sell tens or hundreds of various handset models in every single country worldwide. Now doesn't that put things into perspective!