The flaw in your logic is that you assume that they sold all 175K players at the begining of the time period.
If it were a steady rate of sales over the period, you could approximate it by using the number of units total number of units sold at the mid-point (this assumes a steady rate of sales) this mid point number would be half of the 175k, or 87.5k, the reason this works is that with a straight line increase in sales, the higher number of units later in the year balances out the lower number of units earlier in the year.
using this approximation, sales figures would be half of total you calculated, or 1,632,750 This number is less than 9% off from the claimed number shipped, of course the ACTUAL number sold is a little bit less, because of that 1,500,000 shipped, some percentage is held in stock etc.
While I like to poke holes in the HD fanboy's foolish and grandiose claims as much as the next guy, this claim is actually in the realm of statistical possibility.
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