- Posts tagged Market Share
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Apple vs. PC Shipments: "PC" Decline Worse Than Reported
Based on data from Gartner and IDC, AllThingsD reported that it was a very bad year for PC shipments, except at Apple.
I have a problem with that.
It isn't that it's not true, but rather that PC growth vs. Apple is even worse than reported. To see why, let's look at the chart from Gartner for US "PC" shipments, where the conclusion is that Apple growth increased 20.7% while PC growth declined 5.9%.
If you truly want to know how Apple did in the US on its own against "PCs", you must subtract it from the latter's numbers. Here's what you get:
- Total 4Q11: 15,854,964
- Total 4Q10: 17,342,605
- 4Q11-4Q10 Growth: -8.5
The originally reported dismal "PC" growth of -5.9% becomes an even more dismal -8.5% without Apple's numbers propping it up. That -2.6% delta is not insignificant, it's over 40% worse than what was reported.
IDC's numbers are also available. As usual, they do not agree completely with Gartner, yet the trend is the same.
Any way you look at it, Apple is exceeding the "PC" growth rate, and if you pull their numbers from "PC" shipments to get a true Mac vs. PC comparson, the latter's state is revealed to be even worse than it appears at first glance.
Mac US Sales Share the Highest in Apple's History
According to the Quarterly PC Tracker Survey released by IDC today, Apple shipped 1.99 million Macs in the U.S. during the third quarter of 2010. That's good for 10.6 percent of the 18.9 million PCs shipped in the U.S., putting Apple's share at its highest in the U.S. in the company's history
This despite Macs supposedly being too expensive, and of course an economy that's been less than helpful in spurring large consumer purchases.
Further, it's especially impressive when you consider it represents 24% y/y growth while the rest of the industry was essentially flat. Apple has been outpacing the PC industry's growth for years now, and it shows.
Business Insider On the Outside Regarding Apple Long-Term
Fast forward 5 to 10 years and it’s not hard to imagine seeing Apple with a small (but probably very profitable) share of the smartphone market. It will be a niche player in the market it revolutionized and could have dominated. History seems bound to repeat itself!
Actually, it's pretty hard to imagine the above outcome. In order to do so you'd have to forget that:
- Phones aren't PCs; that model doesn't apply.
- There's zero price advantage in non-iPhones. Indeed, Apple set the price points at $99 and $199, which initially could only be met by competitors via mail-in rebates.
- The iPod model is far closer to the iPhone model, and no one's touched Apple in this area.
- Android gains are almost all on the back of Verizon, who can't sell the iPhone.
- Android's becoming more fragmented every day. (A new phone released this week is using version 1.5.)
Ignore all of that—as many seem to—and it's still hard to imagine Business Insider's projected outcome. Because nowhere in the scenario does Apple's Board of Directors toss out their brilliant CEO (and the team he's put together) to bring in a line of unprepared bozos as replacements. Nope. Ain't happening.
With iPad, Apple is No. 3 in portables, Let the Howling Begin
The best thing about this isn't that Apple jumps to #3, but rather that it's become realistic to include tablets in the mobile PC numbers to begin with. At the iPad launch just a few months ago this was unheard of, but the iPad has proven so capable it's not a wild idea, it's becoming obvious.
Traditional PC vendors—who still have no iPad rival—will howl and protest at this suggestion. We'll be told that only the type of PC we've been using for years fits in this category. Their rhetoric will be tailored not only against products they don't sell, but also to soothe baffled consumers and IT groups who can't imagine that "portable" isn't synonymous with laptop.
We'll see a lot of this, but ultimately it will fail. When the iPhone came out there was lots of talk about how it wasn't really a smartphone, but that BS didn't last, either. The market defines product categories, not the tech shills and marketers who want to bend a definition to include only what they sell.
US iPad Market Share: I'm proud of my home state.
No big surprise California is tops in US iPad market share, and while that's my current home I'm originally from Nebraska. Check it out; it's number five!
You thought the Midwest was backwards? Thought all the action was in Silicon Valley? Ha! Think again. The cornhusker state is obviously a technological juggernaut.
