Mac sales outpacing industry 3:1

Jarrod Spiga:

First, let me state that it is indisputable that Apple sales are growing - and I'm not aiming to debunk that.

However, the reporting in this story only goes to show that statistics can re-inforce just about any opinion that you may have. I challenge all readers to click through to the IDC press release and read it with an open mind.

If you do so, you'll notice a few things that - while reported correctly - can be easily misinterpreted.

For instance, Apple's year-on-year growth is reported correctly. However, add 26% on top of a small figure and you still get a small figure - albeit a slightly bigger one.

Apple's year-on-year growth corresponds to 199,000 extra units. Compare this with HP's growth - 830,000 extra units were over the last year.

Overall market share for Apple increased by 0.6%. This is the less-misleading figure - and it's interesting to note that this figure is NOT mentioned in the article (BTW, saying that Apple's market share was NOT 3.7% - the IDC press release clearly says it was 4.8%).

As mentioned earlier, this is good news for Apple and is worthy of being reported. I just wish that the reporting of such news was slightly less biased and slightly more accurate.

tin:

Vista is probably a consideration. Anyone avoiding Vista would not be buying a new PC that forces them to get it (unless they have existing XP volume licenses allowing them to roll back).

Vista has also convinced quite a number of people to move to Macs or Linux. Macs getting the bulk of sales from this since:
a) you need to buy new hardware to get it
b) Macs are the other option as far as most people understand.

And finally, I would like to remind people that sales mean nothing. Do you go buy a new PC every quarter just to get your vote in on the sales stats?

Stephanie:

Apple are shipping a different product. I contend that overall capitalisation is the only legitimate comparison, because Acer, HP etc do not market the same products. It would be like arguing that Sun is unsuccessful because it doesn't market many machines. Never mind that the price point is many thousands of dollars plus. Apple, unlike HP, Acer and the like sells mainly in the premium price range and profits on its own operating system. This is something HP and Acer do not do. As for Dell; it's like comparing Porsche sales to Hyundai and calling Porsche unsucessful. What would make me truly happy would be to have a Sun Sparc processor inside a Mac which is manufactured by HP or Toshiba. Sadly it would never happen. The only point where market share probably does matter is experience designing and debugging hardware and software partnerships. This does not affect Apple because it has captured niche markets in media publishing, science and open source just as windows has captured business apps. With the iPhone they have created their own market, again on media. As for their laptop hardware- very pretty but sadly the hardware is not as stable as it was in the early imac days.

Apple, please, it is time to try something you tried before. By all means closely control and guard your form factor this time, but let the majors ship clones and make your money off of the software. Run a Macbook, MacBook Pro and Macbook Clone range and require that the clones occupy only the more expensive price point instead of what happened in the 90s.

Joe S.:

Apple is a hardware company. They make money off of hardware sales. To say that all these companies don't compete with each other is ludicrous. Apple has been building hardware longer then all the companies you mentioned. I think they know what they are doing. Let's see some failure rate numbers on the laptops, otherwise you are just blowing smoke. The high end is where the money is. Margins are pretty thin on low end PCs. Sure they boost the market-share numbers but they are not profitable. Why else would Dell be losing money? Dell the porsche of the computer industry, that gave me a chuckle. Dell is the Wallmart of the computer industry. So if the high end is where the profits are Apple should give this market to clone makers. Yup, that is a pretty sane thought. The clone makers in the 90s did make machines at the high end. Apple is a hardware company that makes software to sell hardware. There are some ludicrous statements in your post. Look at Apples profit margins from the last couple quarters & compare them to the other computer makers even MS.

In the forth quarter of last year, HP and Dell combined sold 10 times as many PCs as Apple in the US, earned 5.5 times as much revenue as Apple, but together only ended up with 2.2 times as much net income as Apple.

In other words, Apple earned nearly half as much net income with its 5% share the market as HP and Dell together, with their combined 55% share of the US PC market: $1 billion for Apple vs $2.2 billion for HP and Dell together. If you compare prices for similarly configured machines from these vendors there is really no difference to speak of. I wonder what percentage of the high end of computing Apple has? That is where the money is. So, Apple should share the profitable end of the PC industry with clonemakers...not very smart at this point. Maybe in the future.

Rimsy:

I believe he was saying that Apple is the Porsche of the industry because it supposedly builds quality, overpriced machines and Dell are Hyundai cause they sell cheap cars, but they sell a hell of a lot of them. Try understanding the post before making an idiot of yourself.

Joe S.:

You're right I missed that. I apologize. Do you have any other comment on the rest of the post or did you just pop in to call me an idiot. Well nipplehead?

u752181:

Are Mac sales outpacing the industry 3:1? This means that 3 Macs are sold for every 1 in the "industry". Just garbage.

The headline is just plain wrong. Change it then let the rest of the garbage you call news stand on its own.

Get over yourself.

JS:

Why do you care?

Rimsy:

No, he didn't say Mac sales are outpacing the industry 3:1, he said Mac sales GROWTH is outpacing the overall industry average 3:1, so they are gaining market share. Shows there are a lot of stupid people out there who get sucked in by clever marketing.

Anonymous1:

Quote - No, he didn't say Mac sales are outpacing the industry 3:1, he said Mac sales GROWTH is outpacing the overall industry average 3:1
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Maybe you should have a look at the title of the article again