Piper Jaffray today in a research note maintained the firm’s “outperform” rating and $52 target price on Apple Computer. In the note, Piper noted that Apple’s market share of worldwide personal computer shipments rose to 2.5% in the second quarter, up from 2.3% in the first quarter.
“Apple’s worldwide PC shipment market share over the last 2 years has been hovering in the 1.8%-2.3% range. We expect continued market-share gains through the back-half of CY05, as Apple benefits from carryover from the massive installed base of iPods during the back-to-school and holiday seasons.”
The research firm said that even small gains in market share would significantly boost Apple’s overall revenue and EPS. Specifically, earnings-per-share estimates for Apple would rise 9% if the company grows its PC market share from 2.4% in 2004 to 3.0% in 2006.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Gartner: Apple grows shipments 31 percent in Q2 2005, moves from 5th to 4th in U.S. market share – July 18, 2005
IDC: Apple gains U.S. market share at double overall market rate, up to 4.5 percent for Q2 2005 – July 18, 2005
Gartner: Apple Mac moved up to fifth position in the U.S. market in first quarter 2005 – April 15, 2005
Encapsulated post script even …. Wow!
Enough about this – were’s the announcement about the new ibooks, the new mac-minis and the itunes phone?
Enough of this market share crap. It’s not even presented logically. This whole Apple at 2+% vs. Windows based PCs at 97+% is just bullshit unless we’re talking strictly OS install base. Otherwise, if we’re talking personal computer shipments, then, well, Microsoft is the clear loser at a whopping 0%. MICROSOFT DOESN’T MAKE COMPUTERS! You hear that, Microsoft? YOU LOSE!
Furthermore, “Windows based PCs” does not represent a single computer manufacturer or brand. So it’s illogical to present ALL the PC makers as one unit of market share vs. Apple as the other unit of market share.
So, when we present market share statistics of personal computer shipments, we need to break them down by manufacturer/brand. I’ll supply the example since you researchers don’t seem to get it.
Apple = 2.5%
Dell = ???%
Gateway = ???%
Compaq = ???%
Sony = ???%
Is this becoming clear now?
all it matters for is installed base–and macs last longer so that’s higher anyway!
Analysts look at the quarterly %’s because it reveals at a basic level how well a company is doing, and therefore how much money they are generating. So it does matter, but from a different point of view.
Installed base is fine, but really only a good judge of how many computers are out there which can run a piece of software, or can utilise external hardware, for example.
Anectodely, my experience is that people are flocking to Macs fast.
I switched earlier this year. A colleague at work followed soon after, and two others are seriously considering. A friend bought a Powerbook last month. Another friend will be replacing his PC with an iMac later this year.
And this weekend another friend who is considering switching wants to test drive mine.
It won’t be long before the number of friends with Macs outnumbers those with PCs.
Even more interesting, one of my bosses recently gave consideration to switching the company to Macs. (We used to have them in the late 80s and early 90s).
None of this was imaginable last year.
Justified: It doesn’t seem that the article compares Apple share with Wintel share. As far as I can see it only compares Apples with Apples!
As long as the number indicates purchased units/quarter, Apple will always look crap compared to its Win counterparts. Apple machines
definately last longer (and i’m not talking uptime here;) than PCs.
This fact makes these numbers very hard to use as a valid indicator of precise marketshare.
If every mac had the same “lifetime” as a PC these numbers would
indicate some kind of tendency. As it is now they only make the outsiders
and paper-analysts speculate in the most absurd ways. I myself never
trash my ex-machines (what mac user does anyway?) I just pass them on
to friends or family members who don’t need the latest stuff. Now, I’m
sure this is not uncommon among mac users…but the result is fewer
purchases. So, I guess the installed userbase is far far larger than most
userbase-analysts/experts claim. Big deal, this aint no secret, but I
rarely see anyone mention this in the marketshare yada-yada context.
oh well
Installed base is one thing, but increasing market share is always preferable to declining or stagnating market share.
I would love to see the break outs on these numbers for how many are actual computers and how many are cpu’s put in something else like an atm.
Joan,
I understand that this article is not about Apple vs. everyone else combined. But because of the 98:2 status that’s lingered for so long, there’s a stigma attached to ANY market share discussion when it comes to Apple that even a “if the company grows its PC market share from 2.4% in 2004 to 3.0% in 2006” comment looks really pathetic.
In general, peoples’ perception of a 2-3% market share would change if they understood that the biggest competition out there was at around 18% rather than that 98% urban legend. 2-3% might not always signal the death of Apple if people understood that other personal computer makers rang up market shares as low as 6.5% (IBM).
“The utter commoditization of the PC market has made profits more difficult to come by for just about everyone but Dell. HP’s PC business is barely profitable, and last week the company announced plans to merge the PC division into its very profitable Imaging and Printing Group.”
—1/18/2005 9:11:48 PM, by Eric Bangeman, arstechnica
Apple makes a fair profit from its computer sales, and that makes a bit stronger statement than does its market share.
I agree completely with justified’ points and have had to explain that to many of my “PC” friends. And gog is right on as well. I have personally helped and seen every one of my neighbors, our sports coaches, friends, doctors, dentists and my whole family convert to Mac over the last couple years. I’ve always had a Mac and I also had PC’s until OS X. After OS X, I dumped all my PC’s and I’ve been singing in the Mac praises ever sense.
I work in the digital video industry and I love it when people ask me how I do such great stuff for all the kids programs, sports and medical fields. I just tell them I use a Mac. Yeah, I know they could kind-of do it with a PC and I have but, now I don’t have to explain why, they just know and say, “yeah, we’re thinking about getting one.” And quite frankly, for the “average Joe computer user”, there is really no other way they could do it.
I saw the writing on the wall and that is why I bought a boat load of stock way back when at $15 bucks for myself and my kids. Now my kids can pay for their own college. Thanks everyone at Apple!
but I hope we do realize that when Apple market share stagnates it actually means it is GROWING? PC market worldwide is expanding every year. For any company to KEEP the same market share it has to grow at the same speed of the market, roughly some 10~15% yearly.
These days Apple market share growth is due to the fact that Apple is growing much FASTER than the rest of the market, this year at over 40% growth. Not a surprise with the latest news and performance and the fact that other PC brands using Windows have seen their growth slower than the market. iPod Halo? OS X Halo finally catching? Virus fatigue? All combined factors but it is more than evident that people are dumping their Windows platforms to buy Apple computers: Apple growth was 3 times faster than the market this year!
Statistics mean often the wrong thing to people who can’t look beyond the sheer numbers.
Just from my own little sphere of the world, I’ve helped advise my brother to buy a iBook. I myself have a mac mini. And already demo’d it to work colleagues who are now interested in the mini (waiting for the rumoured updates!) and another friend is already convinced to buy. He’s now scouting around for mac shops to investigate further. hehe….