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IDC: Apple’s Macintosh market share at 3.7 percent for Q2 2004

Friday, July 16, 2004 · 8:57 pm · 50 Comments

According to a report for IDC, Apple was the 5th largest personal computer maker in the USA for the second quarter of 2004. IDC says Apple held a 3.7% share of the market, selling 495,000 Mac units in the USA. Dell held the top spot with 32.9%, followed by HP at 19.3%, Gateway at 5.6%, and IBM at 5.6%. Apple’s unit sales represented a growth of 9.3% over Q2 2003. Shipments included those to distribution channels or end users and measured desktop, notebook, and server models. Apple worldwide market share is estimated at somewhere between 2-3%.

Related MacDailyNews articles:
More people use Apple Macs than you think; 8-12 percent of homes use Macs – March 31, 2004

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Comment Feed

50 Comments

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Jay

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 10:11 pm · Reply

People talk about Apple’s tiny market share…but they’re only a little less than IBM. Sounds good to me.
ChrisT

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 10:40 pm · Reply

Plus I know several people using 3-4 year old iMacs and those aren’t counted in the 3.7% percent. That figure doesn’t reflect installed base, just current sales. PCs are replaced more frequently than Macs are because on average they don’t last as long.
stingerman

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 10:53 pm · Reply

Market-share has nothing to do with actual users. If one PC user goes through 5 PC’s in 5 years that is 5 PCs sold. Typical Mac user keeps using his Mac for 5-7 years.
SuzieMacFan

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 11:03 pm · Reply

I am one of those people using a (aheem) 5 year old Power Mac G3. I spent a fortune adding memory and hard drives, and now I can’t aford a new one! Can I get a Boo Hoo from the crowd? But – I WILL buy a new Mac soon. Even at 5, it still works better than my windowz machines!
BuriedCaesar

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 11:13 pm · Reply

Once again, there’s likely going to be plenty of confusion and a lack of explanation between the difference of “units sold = market share” for a given quarter vs. the “actual installed base” of a given maker.

As I understand it, there should be a marked distinction between all the nuances of what “installed base” means – how many are identified as end users, individuals, enterprise, corporate, servers, etc., etc.?

Not to mention what “units sold” means – again – how many were to end-users, individuals, corporations, governments, server farms, etc., etc.?

And I wish they’d quit saying these companies, even Apple, are a “largest computer maker” – and call it what it is – “most units sold in a single, three-month quarter”.

Finally, “most” doesn’t always necessarily equal “best”…
JJ

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 11:39 pm · Reply

3.7 huh? Well, we gotta get back to that 5% that macs had earlier. But it is true that Macs do last longer than PCs. I bought my dual g5 a year ago, coming off of a g3 minitower 333mhz. -That’s the last beige Mac that Apple ever made if anyone would like some useless trivia.

But, I still have the g3 and it works prefectly. Just runs OSX slow, and I couldn’t upgrade to Panther ( lack of USB )
Mac User

Friday, July 16, 2004 - 11:41 pm · Reply

SOOO, does represent an improvement, or continued slide? Hoping the former, even a little bit of growth would be nice…
mike

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 12:45 am · Reply

obviously, hardware share is not the point, OS share is the point.. that’s the platform..

but let’s see some installed base numbers..

how about a general sample of users asking if they own a PC or a Mac…

around 3000-5000 people.. ask them if they own a PC or a Mac

(ignore users who own both)

this market share shit has much to do with BUSINESS SALES which apple has little to do with..

come on.. bank tellers, cash registers at walmart?
mike

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 12:50 am · Reply

ceasar: % of computers that in use from a particular hardware maker…

nearly impossible to calculate..

best to do is survey..

i was impressed that 8% of some college student survey had a powerbook and 15% were going to get one in the next year

that was on MDN a few days ago
Ashan McNealy

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 2:08 am · Reply

Okay, listen to this. Most people that have a Mac also have a PC, either for business or some other reason. Basically because they can’t get away without having one.
However, all of these people consider themselves Mac users. If they could drop one of their platforms, they would gladly drop the PC platform.

Add that to the fact that Macs have a longer shelf life.
Add on the fact that on average the Dells being sold are half or a third the price of the average mac sold.

All of a sudden, Mac installed base is much bigger, Apple’s revenue isn’t to be laughed at, and the fact that for every mac user there is a PC using friend that wants to switch, agrees that macs are better, but just can’t afford one or afford one on-top of the PC that he/she needs to have to play games.

Apple gets just as much, if not more press than the rest of the PC world combined.

Apple installed base is getting larger every day. They already went through the difficult transition phase of OS9 to X. When windows has to transition to longhorn, and lose some compatibility due to security features, Linux will be on the attack. At this point many people will be thinking about switching platforms. If they are going to need to get a whole new set of applications, why not get a mac, where iLife (arguably the best suite of its kind) comes with it? This is when Apple will once again jump over 5% of total computers sold, which equals 10-15% of all americans will be mac users.

Meanwhile, windows will start trying to dominate other markets. The biggest potential market growth comes from china. When windows invades china, Americans, Europeans, Japanese-a whole lot of people- will be turned of from the windows platform. The rest is history.

true?
Jack A

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 4:13 am · Reply

This is just the beginning. The Switch Campaign prepared the ground and sowed the seeds, All the viruses and security problems dowsed the PC Users with water, and the iPod added sunshine and showed many of them the light. Just watch, this is the start of a trend and Switchers are gonna be popping up all over.
Jack A

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 4:14 am · Reply

Make that the iPod, iTunes for Windows, and ITMS added sunshine and showed them the light.
Wiser

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 5:05 am · Reply

I am guesstimating that most all new sales of macs are going to mostly previous Mac owners.

It does not matter how many old macs one has at home (I�ve got 4 collecting dust a closet) all that counts is new units sold.
And that�s all that matters in this report.

Even though Apple sales went up 9.3% this lags behind PC total sales. So Apple is losing ground in the market share battle.

PS: One does not need a Mac to use an iPod, it works fine on a PC, too.
Chris

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 5:30 am · Reply

According to the figures, the worldwide market share did go up to 2.2% from 1.8%. There were 876000 macs sold and an estmated total of 38.7million total pc units
Seahawk

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 6:59 am · Reply

These are the % movements from Apple (public release nom: not leaking anything):

Sequential Change Year/Year Change Operating Segments Units Revenue Units Revenue Americas 31% 16% 4% 23% Europe 2% -9% 33% 37% Japan 8% -1% -4% 2% Retail 4% 2% 83% 86% Other Segments (1) 5% 4% 16% 40% Total Operating Segments 17% 6% 14% 30%

(1) represents FileMaker and Asia Pacific
macster

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 7:19 am · Reply

Top 5 huh? Forget the % sold for a second and think of the car-makers analogy. If Apple were a car maker they would be in-line with maybe Volkswagon, following the the Big Three Us makers and and the Big Two Japanese makers. Silly comparison…but just as dumb as these writers that still refer to Apple as that “fledgling”, “struggling” computer maker.
stringbean

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 7:54 am · Reply

Ha…

I’m going on holiday!!! That has the disadvantage that I’ll miss out on all the latest Mac developments. It also has the exact same advantage, namely that I can get a life away from all the latest Mac developments!

Mind you my iPod is coming with me.

Gosh… I’m starting to miss MDN already
bleez

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 8:01 am · Reply

market share counts for nothing (as far as a good business is concerned). the best businesses are not always the biggest, and the biggest businesses are not always the best.

apple is running one of the most profitable computer companies in the world. geez, what company wouldnt want a profit of $60 mil for the quarter and $4 bil + in the bank…. ?? most computer manufacturers are struggling to remain healthy (financial wise.)

if i was running a company, i would much rather be small and profitable, as opposed to big and unprofitable.. fairly simple logic i would have thought.

so maybe apples growth (in terms of number of units sold) is not growing as quick as the industry standard.. but, does that matter..?? if they keep making profits of $60 mil a quarter, they will always remain a viable company.. and will be around long enough to see many other manufacturers come and go
Seahawk

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 8:16 am · Reply

bleez, totally. It is a linear train of thoughts that pundits always seem able to miss. If Apple keeps selling more computers every year, and keeps making lot of money year after year, how in the world they could be disappear or close business?

Pundits reason solely based on the global market share concluding Apple will soon disappear. Not taking into account that this Q figures show Apple beating global market share rise, with same reasoning pundits should conclude that Britons will soon disappear from planet Earth because their growth is slower than in China. Same silly conclusion from same figure and growth data.
Seahawk

Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 8:20 am · Reply

And, I keep repeating, Apple has 100% of its own market share, well 99.9% now with iTunes for Windows as well.

Apple does not have to fight with other manufacturers in order to be chosen as platform to run OS X. PC manufactures come and go fighting with each other to be the hardware where to run Windows for the next Microsoft customer. Apple does not have that problem: it is the only dog in the arena.

Apple would have collapsed long ago if that was not the case, ie if it was just another PC running Windows.