So it seems. The fact that some websites report as sold and others as shipped demonstrates confusion and if Nintendo had sold that much, they would clearly and unequivocally have said so. Other brands are more transparent when they have figures.

From a purely logical point of view there is no need to confuse if they have the advantage, in other words the only reason to make this unclear is cause they want to pass "shipped" for "sold to the public" and they are just playing on the confusion here.

So until clearly proven otherwise, it stands to reason to believe these are shipped units and it's up to Nintendo to clear this up.

What confusion? They’ve released the figures and some people choose not to accept them. Pretty simple.

Indeed, above my expectations, I'd guess it's undertracked by around 1.2m on here.

 13.5m sold, 14.86m shipped?

Shipped.
Indeed, impressive numbers
Maybe it sold nearly 14 millions in 2017.

Might be worth creating a thread letting people guess. I was going to ask the same question. When will see updates on here as 12.3m as clearly undertracked.

it says 17.74m shipped by end of march 2018 https://www.dualshockers.com/nintendo-shipped-14-86-million-switch-units-2017-predicts-17-74-million-march/

Wow VGC crapped out on me. Bad gateway.

Unless Nintendo themselves are going to come out with shipped (which they haven't), i'm not changing the title. Every other publication, from the WSJ to the BBC are saying sold, so sold it will stay.

Given how short supplied it is in Japan again I'd guess it's nearer 14 million sold then and 14.86 million shipped. It's fantastic regardless.

Agreed. It clearly says sales on the Nintendo statement yet some are acting like they have an in-depth knowledge of how Nintendo announce these things. 

Do you realise I just quote the numbers you gave and you quoted me back to correct the numbers you gave in the first place ?