Here's an interesting philosophical question: If a company doesn't quantify its sales, but claims that product A sold X many more units than products B and C combined over Y number of days, does it have to issue a correction when that turns out not to be true? It may not be up there with "If a tree falls in the woods ..." but in tech and telecommunications marketing it's about as close as you get.

The company in question is Sprint, which on Monday generated some headlines (on the day that Apple unveiled the iPhone 4, no less) by announcing massive sales for its new Google Android-based phone, the HTC Evo. Sprint said that on June 4 -- the new 4G smartphone's launch day -- it sold three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre phones sold over their first three days of availability combined.

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein says he's optimistic about his company's future, but with its smartphone sales sagging and the mobile competition heating up, Rubinstein may be the only person who feels that way.

In its fiscal third quarter, Palm shipped 960,000 smartphones -- a 23 percent increase from the previous quarter -- but managed to sell only 408,000, which is 29 percent fewer than it moved in its second quarter. Its $150 million in quarterly revenues were well short of what analysts had anticipated.