A Samsung company official as acknowledged that the Galaxy Tab isn't selling as well as it initially indicated. The company has claimed that it shipped 2 million tablets since last September, but that number isn't actual sales to consumers. It is shipments to retailers and wireless operators.

In addition, evidence suggests that the 7-inch tablets based on Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android operating system are moving from retailers to consumers and back.

The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog quoted company official Lee Young-hee in a transcript:

"As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite smooth. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn't as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK."

AllThingsDigital indicated that ITG Investment Research tracked sales data from nearly 6,000 wireless stores in the United States since the Galaxy Tab's November launch and found return rates for the Galaxy Tab through December to be about 13 percent. Tab return rates through Jan. 15 totaled 16 percent.

The Galaxy Tab is based on the Android 2.2 operating system, which isn't optimized for tablets.

For more:
- see this eWeek article 
- read the WSJ's blog
- check out this AllThingsDigital article

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