Because it had shipped more than anything. There was nothing to challenge.

Ballmer said the 360 had sold over 66 Million units. He said there were over 66 Million 360 users, when the real number was 65.8 Million shipped.

Plausible. Nokia alone sold 4.4 million Windows Phones. And that was mostly with exclusive carrier partnerships. HTC had their WP 8X pretty much on every carrier worldwide. I expect another few million from them as well. Then we have Samsung with the Ativ S and ZTE and maybe a few others OEM's. 10 to 12 million is definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

Lolwut? When Ballmer said 66m sold he meant sold to retailers aka shipped...isn't that obvious? Also, he was only 0.2m off. If anything, that statement actually heightens my confidence in the accuracy of what he says. 

I think that's a bit too high. Most likely Balmer was speaking of one specific type of phone w/ WP, not as a whole. If it was for WPs overall, and they were truly selling 450% up YOY, MS would have stated as much, as well as given sales numbers. Probably still an improvement, though.

Why are people surprised by this? 12M phones isn't that much when you look at all markets. Compare it to android, where one company, Samsung sold that many alone with one model.

It's good for microsoft because it's an improvement, a big one. But compared to Android or iOS, 12M is nothing.

He said users, not sold.  Still, even if he said sold, he would have been off by more than 200K off, as he said OVER 66M.

Half? I think that's a given

Nokia sold 4.4 m lumias last Q alone. I don't know about HTC and Samsung but they definetly moved more than 2 m.

OP:

You are suggesting that both HTC and Sammy moved more than 8m devices? 

EDIT:

I keep forgetting that's windows 8 isn't the only windows OS out there.... nvm

He specifically said USERS, mbp. That means sold to consumer.

Hes the CEO and he lied about the numbers. He said that the 360 had sold over 66 Million when the numbers were 200k less and shipped.

I saw the conference and he said that WP's as a whole were selling 5x faster in the run-up to Christmas than they were in the same period last year. 

Also, Microsofts quarterly earnings report is on Thursday, so they'll probably release actual numbers then. It wouldn't make sense for them to comment on the figures before their earnings release...

Hmm...source?