We know the Utada wikipage is full of "mysterious" facts, but I would like to make some sense of this one, in particular. It's about her sales.

In every american interview she made so far, they claim she sold more than 52 million albums. But according to this Sales By Year chart, she only sold 36 million (albums and singles, I'm guessing). And what's even weirder is that most of the radio hosts said they checked her Wikipedia to get the "52 million" stats.

Anyone knows what could explain the difference in numbers?

the 36 million just goes for japanese sales. the 52 million is worldwide

Ok, I didn't check this thoroughly because I'm sleepy, but I did a little add-up of the Worldwide Japanese Album Sales and the Worldwide International Album Sales and it all adds-up to approx. 24 Million. A number that I doubt will reach the 52 Millions with the Singles counted.

Unless, when they divide Japanese Sales from Worldwide Sales, like in this example (First Love - Japan sales: 7.65 million / Worldwide sales: 10 million) they really mean the album has a total of 17,65 Million sales (Japan + Worldwide). Wouldn't that be a tad crazy? Something in that Wikipedia page must be wrong.

According to IDJ's press kit for Utada, it lays out like this:

19.5 million singles
25.6 million albums
28.9 million downloads
52 million sales worldwide.

Some of those numbers probably overlap to get the 52 million figure (otherwise it would be even more )

the press kit is here: http://islandrecords.com/site/promo/splash/utada/come_back_to_me/

Oh downloads! That's what the wikipage is missing (and jesus are they a lot).
As for the numbers overlapping, that's a bit weird yeah, but well, if the real total is more than 52 than we're fine. It would be bad if the true total was less than 52 tho, because then it would seem like a big fat lie and that's not good publicity.
Thanks ruruna.

freakin first love saled over 11 million DAMNNNN!!! tat freakin crazy lolz she is the goddes of music