This post primarily aims to quench my curiosities in the fastest way. Heavily reliant on my judgement and intuition.
Written from scratch by Meston Ecoa
CALCULATIONS BASED ON DATA SHOWED ...
Source: Reuters
I want to get a sense of what level of approximation happens when financial news agencies write up their articles. Is it rocket science? Is data freely accessible? Can I make do without resorting to them?
There are similar articles from lesser known websites.
Source: Reuters, Invezz, Retail.com, Smartphone Magazine
Q1. Where are they getting data?
Q2. What does the calculation look like?
China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT)
Source: CAICT Eng, CAICT Chinese translated
Articles sited the source, so it was easy to find. I found that the website was in offered in both Chinese and English. I soon realized that the English version as poorly updated. Google Translating the Chinese option was far better. After some browsing I was able to find the source document.
Calculation
Source: Weixin report of the document
The math was very elementary. I was able to get more or less the figures of the article through a simple process. The math is self-explanatory so I won’t go into the details and just show the result. I’m pretty sure anyone could understand. I’ve highlighted the relevant figures in the source, that translates to the blue figures. In my calculation shipment of foreign phones grew 38%, not 40%. I’m guessing that’s because domestic phones market share in 2023 May is not exactly 86%. It says so on the chart, but could be anything from 85.5% to 86.4%. Reuters could have had a more exact figure by digging up the report from a year ago.
Source: Meston Ecoa’s excel
Can ChatGPT perform the same calculation?
Source: ChatGPT
I am using the baseline free ChatGPT. Above is the prompt that I used. The calculation was wrong. Only after I nudged it in the right direction would it get it right.
Source: ChatGPT
The answer above is false. It got me a little skeptical about the analytical capabilities of generative AI. I do think giving up hope is premature, as models evolve fast. Next time I could try comparing different models.
Conclusion
I was able to answer both questions.
Q1. Where are they getting data?
They get it from CAICT. Translated version of the original Chinese website is recommended. If I were to invest in Apple, or any other company, I should have a radar of relevant data sources like these.
Q2. What does the calculation look like?
Calculation is really simple. Anyone could do it. It gave me an idea of what happens behind the scenes. Also, it gave me a sense of what kind of underlying data would exist behind some calculation.
Written from scratch by Meston Ecoa
May contain incorrect data and information
