Using figures from Gartner that project PC vendors will ship 187 million units in 2004, up almost 14% from 2003, Paul Thurrot sees doom for Apple Computer’s Mac platform. Recent Apple CPU sales show 700,000 to 800,000 units a quarter or just over three million units for the year.
Apple Computer’s Macintosh platform “will continue to lose ground, as the company has done every year since Steve Jobs took over. Given the best-case for Apple (800,000 units a quarter, or 3.2 million units for the year), Apple will sell just 1.7 percent of all computers in 2004, compared to 1.88 percent for 2003. But that’s the best case. It will certainly be lower,” Paul Thurrott writes for Paul Thurrott’s Internet Nexus, which proclaims itself to be “an honest look at Windows alternatives by technology reporter Paul Thurrott.”
Thurrott continues, “There’s no debate [about Apple’s market share] (indeed, Apple executives are still using the bogus 5 percent figure). Apple’s market share is 1.88 percent today, and as your own math showed you, it will be 1.7 percent or lower in 2004. Why is this so hard for Mac advocates to understand? The Mac market is ending. Let’s hope Apple has broader consumer electronics plans than just the iPod.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Why is it so hard for Paul to understand that the Mac isn’t going away any time soon? Is it too great a leap to imagine a meaningful percentage of Windows iPod and iTunes users checking out a Mac for their next computer purchase – especially in light of Windows’ virus du jour situation and the multi-year wait for “Longhorn?” We see a Mac renaissance taking place. Paul sees only doom. What do you see?
he’s an idiot. did you know, there are still people today who think einstein is wrong? so, stupidity still persists in this golden age of technology. only the stupid ones who play mean are normally the one’s that get heard.
this guy is such a shithead….
I see light at the end of the tunnel, but the marketing situation needs to change. I think Chiat/Day is doing a poor job of getting the word out that OS X is superior in most ways to XP. Some of that blame must lie with Apple as well. Apple’s ads enforce the “Toy” myth currently. They are cutsie, cool, but all in all they are uninformative. They make Mac users want to buy another Mac, but don’t do that much to inform Windows user why the should switch other than tell them that they should.
Sorry just my little Apple to grind.
He is such a turd. Please, stop putting Thurrott’s dribble in here and he will disappear. The only traffic he get’s is when he writes an article like this. If Macdaily would stop, he will go away. Please?!
Pure junk journalism. Tired, Chicken Little rhetoric. Not worth a second of any thinking person’s time, or worth recruiting a single neuron in service of even the thought of reading it. Ignore, move along, and hope that MDN can track down articles containing productive, intelligent criticism in the future.
find more ways to make people switch and spend money to get them to do it. i don’t care if the number is 1.8% or 5% – enlarge this number.
R
I’ve been hearing this for the last 10years , since I bought my first Mac. THEY have all proclaimed the death, yet it hasn’t happened. I think it’s just wishful thinking on their part.
There is only one word that matters in business. Profit. Apple has been profitable, even as other companies haven’t. Clearly, Mr. Thurrott is baiting. If you’re belief is that only popularity matters, you obviously aren’t a mac user. Not worth my time. Show me the losses. Or get your jollies doing actual journalism.
Profit in business matters – not volume – as long as Apple makes profits, has a market to sell to, whats the problem? People such as mr Thurott who are not in business as such will never get it.
Mac will likely make inroads in to niche markets – where quality, performance not price drives the decision makers…
I’m with cpr86 on this one!!
‘Doom Doom Doom’ is the catchcry… and profitability is the key to long term survival here, which Apple has done in a down market.
Paul Thurrot, just does not understand, he has been brainwashed like so many others. First of all, Apples biggest marketing mistake has been making great products that keep working perfectly for year after year, thats it.
Problem is, if it still works, why buy a new one. (totally unlike most PC’s on the market) I cant count how many WinPCs my friends have been through while my first Mac is still fully functional.
I am sure Jaguar or Mercedes have a small share of the auto sales market, compared to Ford. But you get what you pay for, and I doubt those guys will be out of business any time soon either.
25 months ago, I purchased an iMac – and discovered that a computer can be a reliable and stable tool. My family and friends watched with amusement for the first two or three months – but are now all (yes, every one) big Apple fans.
All this from seeing my machine when visiting my home (and my occasional reminders that viruses just don’t matter to me.)
12 months ago, my son switched to Apple, and last month, my sister purchased an Apple laptop. Kenneth, my old friend, has announced that he will be purchasing a G5 just as soon as the new revisions hit the market. Harry at work will wait for a G5 iMac, but in the mean time, has purchased a used iBook.
Slowly, surely… but with real momentum… the tide is starting to run the other way….
I bought a PowerMac G4 733 (single) several years ago. It hasn’t required a single repair and just works. I was planning on buying a new Mac this year, but OS X 10.3 gave my computer a new responsiveness. It’s plenty fast for me – even for Halo though it’s less than the minimum 800Mhz requirement.
Apple is shooting itself in the foot, making quality products that last.
Part of the reason that you keep hearing these is that it’s a “safe bet.”
Wait! Put down that flamethrower!
First off, you can make silly statements like this forever because you will never being wrong–it’ll happen any time now. Just wait for it. And if you’re right–God forbid, Apple gets out of the computer business–you can say “See! I was right!”
It’s sort of like being Vice-President Cheney. He doesn’t know when. He doesn’t know where. But someday, when we least expect it, there will be another terrorist attack on America. If it doesn’t happen, he can claim it was because of government policies. If it does, he gets to be right. Win-win, it’s called.
I’ve converted 4 ppl already…and I really don’t see any of us switching back to windows….
This guy is seriously a joke.
Gee, Justin Timberlake sold more records than the Beatles did last year.
I guess than means Justin Timberlake is better than the Beatles.
Yeah Paul and the iPod mini is a failure because it only had 100K backorders. Think I just saw a silver mini go for 350 on ebay… bet Paul wishes he was one of those backorders….
if the Mac is less than 2% of the market, then why does he spend so much time talking about it.
Of course I disagree with Thurott.
But I do agree with the criticisms of Apple’s marketing of OS X. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that Mac products work, and work, and work..etc. It’s a matter of Apple capitalizing on that fact.
Apple needs an Eveready Pink Rabbit with a bass drum.
A young professor in Massachusetts experimented with rockets early in the 20th Century. He predicted that men would one day fly to the moon. He was ridiculed by the local press as “Moony”. Despite this, he continued his work including the development of the liquid-fueled rocket, the gyroscopic and inertial guidance systems among other things. Nobody in America paid much attention as he continued to work and publish his findings.
The Germans DID pay attention, people like Von Braun and others who developed the V-1 & V-2 for the Nazi regime. When the V-2 struck London, the world stood up and took notice. The aftermath of the war found the US and Soviets scrambling to find and use these men to develop liquid-fueled rockets for their military and later their space programs. The alumni of the V-1 & V-2 programs, students of the now deceased “Moony”, launched the Space Age and designed the Saturn V rocket that launched Neil Armstrong to the moon, using designs built upon the work of “Moony”
“Moony” was Robert Goddard. The NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland is named after this “flake” who had the vision to see liquid-fueled rockets escaping the bounds of earth and exploring the heavens decades ahead of the rest, even the “experts”.
I see Paul Thurott as one of the local reporters in Massachusetts deriding Robert Goddard as “Moony”. They think that truth is only what they know and can see. They parrot the FUD, urban legends and conventional wisdom of the moment, for they are little more than court jesters. They have no vision and lack confidence in and respect for those who do. They are small-minded, parochial, followers, limited in imagination, lacking leadership or conviction, accepting of the status quo, afraid to step forward and say the Emperor has no clothes.
Anyone who judges Operating Systems on their merit KNOWS that Macintosh OS X is superior to Windows XP in every way that is significant to the majority of computer users in the world. All that it is lacking is software development in some specialized markets and applications. Given it’s FreeBSD Unix base, that should be easily rectified.
” The Tortoise is slow, but the earth is patient.”
Think Different
Mac sales are growing… but not as quickly as PC sales. Therefore Mac OS X Panther (and beyond) is doomed to vanish in the face of Windows XP (and someday Longhorn). Gotcha.
Don’t give the guy hits.
This is the guy who calls Windows viruses “viruses spread by UNIX mail servers”… since after all, ANY mail server, including UNIX, can send mail that contains… anything
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There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Nothing lies better than a well-placed statistic. “Omigosh, look – Apple’s market share is down to 1.7% and getting smaller. The Mac market is vanishing!”
On the other side, you’ve got Apple shipping three million units a year, which is a pretty big number in anybody’s book. And they’re making a profit while most PC makers are in red ink.
You do the math.
The intended audience for Mr. Thurrott’s reporting are mostly Windows users and to them, the OS market share statistic means something completely different than what it means to Mac users. The most obvious meaning for a Windows user would be that Microsoft dominates computers and this in itself makes hardware and software “more compatible”. To use a recent example of this compatibility, look at the WMA format and all the hardware that can play it. Those 1.7% computers are simply “not-compatible” and miss out on all those technologies that are taken for granted on Windows.
Thurrott’s stupidity is not however… ending that is…
Just another Apple is dying story, You hear one you hear them all.
The problem is this, the rest of the world is getting into computers, china, east europe etc. They don’t have the money to buy the top of the line Macintosh computers. They usually can just get a cheap PC and steal a copy of Windows.
So tell me where is there a market for Mac’s? Exactly where Apple is building hundreds of new stores, where the smart, wealthy and trendy folks are who can afford quality and appreciate security. The Us government is buying Macs in droves for security, navy using them in submarines, FBI using Powerbooks, NASA using Mac’s.
People tend to keep their Macs 2-3 years, as PC users buy another every year.
Who’s the fool?
Apple is posting a profit and selling units, as long as they keep doing that, there are folks that will buy them. And they will still be around for many many years.