AAPL iPhone Outsold Samsung 1.7 to 1, Says Raymond James

Who’s sold more, Apple (AAPL) or Samsung Electronics (005930KS)?

A question only a fan would care about, perhaps, but it is the subject this morning of a note by Raymond James’s Tavis McCourt, who has an Outperform rating on shares of Apple, and a $690 price target, and doesn’t formally cover Samsung stock.

McCourt gives the crown to Apple when comparing the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 generations, combined, to the various editions of Samsung’s “Galaxy S” series of phones running Google‘s (GOOG) Android, combined with sales of the two editions so far of the “Galaxy Note” phone-cum-tablet, or phablet.

By McCourt’s reckoning,

We estimate Apple has sold approximately 219 million cumulative iPhone 4, 4S and 5 devices (which excludes sales of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and 3GS) since the launch of the iPhone 4 in June 2010 vs. 131 million for Samsung�s Galaxy Series S and Note smartphones since the launch of the Galaxy S also in June 2010.

McCourt writes that although Samsung’s lineup has been “tremendously successful,” the “sudden negative sentiment related to iPhone” has prompted him to want to compare the Galaxy sales versus iPhone sales in the last two and a half years. McCourt thinks the iPhone has extended its lead in volume of shipments over Samsung in the last 12 months.

McCourt’s chart plots the relative success:

How did he get there? McCourt acknowledges that unlike Apple, Samsung doesn’t make regular quarterly disclosure of units sold, so he did a little “smoothing” in his data analysis, relying upon what Samsung has said:

The graphs on the following page highlight (using some generous assumptions) cumulative unit sales for Samsung�s Galaxy S, S II, S III, Note and Note II and Apple�s iPhone 4, 4S and 5 since each model�s respective launch date beginning with the Galaxy S and iPhone 4 launches in June 2010. For the Galaxy handsets, we used the company�s periodic unit sales announcements and made sales trend smoothing assumptions for the dates in between. For the iPhone handsets, we used opening weekend unit sales announcements from Apple and also assumed a 66% share of quarterly reported iPhone unit sales were for the newest iPhone at the time and a 17% share for prior generation models still on the market at the time. Earlier this week, on January 14, Samsung announced via Flickr, it has sold more than 100 million Galaxy S Series phones (S, S II and S III) and more specifically that it had sold 40 million each of its Galaxy S II and S III models. For iPhone fourth quarter 2012 data, we are using our estimate for sales of 48 million iPhones.

For those of you playing at home, McCourt also offers up a chart with the breakdown by model: