How many of them bought the useless G1? Its only when they joined this century with a 3G handset that people outside the US started buying in any volume.
Also, when dealing with a smartphone market of >150M units a year, 33M total sales isn't that impressive. When dealing with a world market of...
Except it absolutely didn't, except to the fanbois that lap it up. First iteration of it was a laughably poor heap which even a £60 PAYG Samsung / LG / Nokia S40 phone made "look rubbish".
Two hardware revisions and a whack of software changes later it still doesn't make the competition look...