Macs grab record U.S. market share
Gartner puts Apple at 8.8%, IDC at 9.4%. This bodes well for next week's earnings report
Source: MacRumors.com
Apple (AAPL) computers sold surprisingly well in a shaky economy last quarter, according to a pair of preliminary reports issued Wednesday by Gartner and IDC.
The big winner this summer was Acer, which became the world's undisputed No. 2 computer maker, after Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), on the strength of netbooks that sell for under $400.
But Mac sales also grew, despite an average selling price of just over $1,200 and profit margins that are the envy of the industry.
Reporting only domestic sales, Gartner estimates that Apple shipped 1.572 million Macs in the United States last quarter, up 6.8% year to year, for an 8.8% market share.
IDC's numbers were slightly higher: 1.64 million Macs, up 11.8%, 9.4% market share.
These seem to be record numbers. Twelve months ago, Gartner put Apple's U.S. market share at 9.5% and IDC had it at 9.1%, but those were preliminary reports. Both firms revised their 2008 Q3 Mac numbers sharply downward and now say Apple's share of the U.S. market last year was actually 8.6%.
Neither Gartner nor IDC reports Apple's worldwide Mac sales. For that we'll have to wait until Monday, Oct. 19, when Apple issues its quarterly earnings report. Analysts we surveyed put total Mac sales anywhere between 2.6 million and 2.9 million, with a consensus of 2.76 million.
UPDATE: Reader SMR in Nashua, N.H., points out that if you go back far enough, you can find years in which Apple enjoyed a larger share of the U.S. PC market. In 1994, for example, it was No. 2 (after Packard Bell) with a 14.7% share. In 1981, it had 17%, which put it in the No. 2 spot after Radio Shack (20%). Source: Ken Paulson's Chronology of Apple Computer Personal Computers.
Below the fold: Gartner and IDC's current U.S. and worldwide PC numbers:
Gartner:
IDC:
At the rate Toshiba grew in Q3, Apple will soon be the *#5* vendor in the US. In any case, they are no threat to be a player internationally.
Just touch the mantle of invincibility or perfection of Apple and millions of drones will attack, see below, sentences taken in separation of such "drones":
@Alex: "[success] happens when a company [ie apple] designs products with users but not profits in mind." Oh yeah, AAPL is a charity!!!
"[Apple OS] comes with everything you need and nothing that clutters desktop and hinders performance." It's the PERFECT THING!!! Kneel!
Eric: "[the bug] was a single isolated situation that had to do with logging into the Guest account on the machine (which NOBODY does anyways), and ONLY the Guest account data was at risk, and that was only in a very specific situation. AND the bug is FIXED now. So shut your pie hole." And I thot that Apple always "just works"! Notice that Apple's bug is "isolated" a "one off", cos a religion can not be wrong, never! And no heretics can be tolerated by followers, "So shut up your pie hole".
To Asher Pat of London who complained about the "adulation" heaped on Apple :
Apple is a profitable, large company.
Many people discuss Apple because they like the products Apple sells.
Many people discuss Apple because they want to do business with Apple.
Many people discuss Apple because they own some of the company's stock. Apple does not pay dividends.
Many people discuss Apple because Apple has an enviable cash hoard of several billion dollars, and they want to get their sticky fingers on the loot.
Many people discuss Apple because they are envious of that cash hoard and think they are better qualified to decide how Apple (aka Steve Jobs) should be investing (spending) the money.
So, let's go back in time, here are some links to read about how to handle all that "cash" :
http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2007/03/apple_computer_.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E3DB163FF931A15753C1A9609C8B63
http://www.appleinsider.com/print.php?id=1656
=
Every financial-news website has information about Apple, here is some on Answers.com :
http://www.answers.com/topic/apple-computer-inc
Even Wikipedia has some information :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.
And there is always CNN:
Xbox Division might report "profitable" quarters but overall is still $16 BILLION in the red and unless MS manages to sell 1-billion XBoxes in the next 4 years, will NEVER get out of the red. MS did not make any money on the internet and lost $700 last year. Win7 will fail as a consumer retail OS as has EVERY MS consumer venture since 1998 (Webtv, zune, WINCE, etc, etc …) MS as an enterprise company is fine but in 8 years will be a lamp license like Xerox on the consumer side.
To the guy that keeps talking about the "bug" in Mac OS that "deletes" your data. That was a single isolated situation that had to do with logging into the Guest account on the machine (which NOBODY does anyways), and ONLY the Guest account data was at risk, and that was only in a very specific situation. AND the bug is FIXED now. So shut your pie hole.
Hey FreeRange, xbox is profitable now, so maybe your news cycle is years behind but nowadays the xbox is a great brand for Microsoft.
Units sold is a horrible measurement for success. What were Acer's gross margins or profitability. Those numbers tell a totally different story of how to measure success. Its like the small minded "analysts" that speak of the xbox as a success even though MSFT has lost billions on it. Gee, no wonder the US economy is in the tank…
Maybe Apple will start focusing on Macs against instead of putting them on the backburner for iPhones every time.
Back in the 90s one of the biggest reasons Apple chose to NOT port MAC O/W to intel chips was due to the lack of a "guaranteed compatibility with peripheral devices"… Apple really is the biggest reason we all can take "plug and play" for granted at all now (remember having to set DIP switches?)
When I've traveled abroad last summer I saw Macs everywhere in East European countries despite the fact that they pay twice as much at the official Apple dealers.
How many Macs and iPhones were purchased in US, unpacked and shipped as used to European countries, Japan and Israel to avoid paying insane custom fees?
Unfortunately, CNN will not break the bigger news: Mac's new 'Snow Leopard' operating system has a BUG which literally resets the computer back to factory after installing Snow Leopard and accessing the "Guest" account. Apple acknowledges the fact, yet will not go public to warn customers, but of course, WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO EXPOSE A BUG WHICH MAKES ALL THE INFORMATION ON YOUR HARD DRIVE INACCESSIBLE!!! See here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10373064-260.html
http://macblips.dailyradar.com/story/home-folder-lost/
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?p=1498705
ex ped: I hate to correct a passionate reader, but we did report that news. See Apple owns up to a Snow Leopard bug
Mac success is not a surprise at all. This happens when a company designs products with users but not profits in mind. Apple has the best quality hardware around comparable only to higher-priced Sony. I understand that for many WalMart customers quality is not a selling point and they would rather buy HP annually than Mac every five years.
Further, professional Unix-based OS X is so much better designed than Vista in terms of usability and friendliness. It comes with everything you need and nothing that clutters desktop and hinders performance. No anti-virus subscription or expensive additional software is necessary unless you want to do video or photo professionally.
Not sure, but I believe that Apple had higher US % for Mac sales in or around 1994, in the pre-Windows 95 days on the heels of its new PowerPC-based product line.
Didn't last too long, though because Win 95 was the big Mac killer back then.
Apple should have released MacOS for x86 machines (i.e. PCs) back in ~1990 when it could have taken DOS users forward, and killed Windows before it got popular. They had it ready but were afraid of what might happen…
ex ped: You are correct. According to Ken Paulson's Chronology of Apple Computer Personal Computers, market shares for the year 1994 were as follows:
Packard Bell 32.4%, Apple Computer 14.7%, Compaq Computer 11.5%, IBM 6.1%, Gateway 5.5%, other 29.8%.
But that's sort of ancient history. The same source has Apple with a 17% market share in 1981, after Radio Shack's 20%.
Has anyone ever seen a blog cheerleading, say, Dell? Or a site deifying Jeff Bezos? Or a series that chokes with joy on every tenth-percentile market-share gain by Oracle?
If yes, perhaps we should hear about such media outlets. But these kind of adulation, of thirst-for-success, wish-for-domination are only relevant for Apple and its army of zealot-like worshippers/promoters. As an example, none of the so called "PS Fanboys" couldnt care less about a corporate entity called Sony, as long as they can get their systems serviced and updated.
Apple has now achieved critical mass. When enterprise email support is implemented (Exchange) then the sky will be the limit. The App store is surging on the backs of strong offerings like iZinger, FlashCardz and MadLipz. Apple is looking good now and well into the future!
So, it's free to get wrong data from IDC and Gartner and it's not free the correct data, available from any quarter results officially released by the PC companies? It's crazy.
No final numbers are published by IDC and Gartner. I can only find preliminary results on press releases pages.
ex ped: Correct. You have to pay to get their final numbers. But Wednesday's preliminary reports include 2008 Q3 numbers that are — at least for Macs — sharply lower than what their press releases said 12 months ago.
2009 Q3 is not a "record" quarter, 12 months ago Apple reached 9.1% according to IDC and 9.5% according to Gartner, when Apple was at third place in US.
ex ped: Those were preliminary numbers; both companies revised Apple's 2008 Q3 market share down to 8.6% in their final reports. Go figure.
But appreciate your note. I've added a sentence to explain the discrepancy.
"The big winner this summer was Asus, which became the world's undisputed No. 2 computer maker, after Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), on the strength of netbooks that sell for under $400."
The proper manufacturer's name was "Acer" not Asus. Asus makes motherbords.
ex ped: Right you are. Fixed. Thanks.
The jackal herd consumes a vast amount of meat on the African plain, but it is the lion, the king of beast, who eats his fill of the warm, choice flesh of the antelope.
So it is written in the book of Steve, and so the acolytes of the one true computer software company shall understand the will of the divine power that manifests itself as the truth.