You expressed doubt of his numbers by claiming that Linux is not equal in numbers to the iPhone(which you called FUD) which in turn spreads uncertainty about the veracity of his claims which is all about the fear his column created in your defensive mechanism.
You impute some kind of a "fear" to me and imply I am responding because of a "defense mechanism." These are loaded words which ARE ad hominem attacks against me, intended to marginalize me to other readers by implying a pathological condition. If we are going to psychoanalyze me, perhaps we should also consider your knee jerk reactions when you enter Mac threads and start spreading your ad hominem attacks. Perhaps the "fear" and "defense mechanism" references toward me are projection because you fear Apple's incursions into the Market and its phenomenal growth?
Getting back to legitimate debate, questioning the veracity of the author's data is NOT ad hominem attack... it is discussing the weight one should give the data that is being presented.
I can, for example, challenge the author on his implied accusation of dishonesty on Apple's part when he says:
"Apple itself said that it sold 13.675 million of iPhones in 2008. According to Gartner market research firm, Apple’s sold-through figures for the iPhone series were considerably lower: 11.4175 million units.
Total mobile phone sales reached 1.22224 billion units in 2008, claims Gartner. Therefore, depending on whose sales numbers to consider real, Apple’s cell phone market share is either 0.934% or 1.118%."
In this section the author implies that the actual, audited numbers of iPhones sold by Apple and reported in their annual report (where if you present false information, stockholders can sue the management, and the Feds can bring criminal charges of fraud) are somehow not accurate and further implies that Gartner's ESTIMATED numbers—provided by an organization that has limited information, mostly garnered by counting people in lines at stores in statistical samples... and which don't include sales on the Internet nor from Apple's own retail stores—are more accurate. Bah! That is FUD. It is perfectly proper to question his other "statistics."
Let's assume Gartner's estimate of 11.4 million sold through the channels they CAN sample, AT&T stores, Best Buy, and WalMart, etc., is accurate. To meet Apple's reported number of 13.7 million iPhones sold you'd have to account for 2.3 million phones not accounted for in Gartner's estimates. Apple sells iPhones on the Internet and through it's 250 Apple Retail Stores, neither of which provide figures to Gartner. Just ignoring the Internet sales and concentrating on the retail stores, doing simple math we find that Apple could sell ~2.3 million iPhones just through the Apple Retail stores if each store sold only 25 per day. Last November I took a friend with her iMac to an appointment at the Sacramento CA Apple Store's Genius Bar. We got there late because of an accident on the freeway so wound up having to wait for about 45 minutes for the next available opening... during that time I saw at least 12 iPhones sold. I think it is perfectly do-able and that Apple's audited count of iPhones sold is accurate and SHOULD have been used in this article instead of bringing up the FUD question of their veracity. So yeah, I will challenge the author's facts. Challenging his facts is not ad hominem.