“The popularity of Apple Computer’s iPod digital music players is helping it sell more Macs, but so far it hasn’t been enough to spark a rise in the company’s share of the personal computer market,” Kasper Jade and Katie Marsal report for Apple Insider.
“According to research firm Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totaled 57 million units in the first quarter of 2006, representing a 13.1 percent increase over the same period last year. But in that time, Apple’s share of the worldwide market slipped from 2.2 percent to a mere 2.0 percent,” Jade and Marsal report. “Similarly, Apple’s share of the personal computer market in the United States also remains relatively flat at 3.6 percent. Although this figure is down from 3.8 percent in the first quarter of 2005, Gartner’s data indicates that Apple gained one tenth of a percent in share over the fourth quarter of 2005.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Q1 2006 (and Q2, too – no figures for that quarter, yet) were in the heart of the Intel transition. Let’s see what happens from here on out.
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These “market share” numbers are always misleading. It represents the percent of computers sold in that quarter. It isn’t the percent of Mac users out there, which I hazard is much higher. Consider, that Macs last longer than a PC and many of those PC’s sold are for businesses. I’d like someone to do a survey of consumers regarding what they use at home. THAT would represent the real market share.
GREAT DEALS ON MACBOOK PRO! – Apple is selling refurbed Mac Book Pros and other Intel Macs at big discounts…check out the “Special Deals” section of the Appel Store – Mac Book Pros for $500 discount! (also great deals on iPods!)
This type of discount shoudl increase market share!
I’m thinking there are a lot of people like myself that are waiting for the workstations and for Adobe to release CS3 in UB, what say ye?
MDN magic word: average, as in methinks I’m an average Mac user.
Cubert –
I agree with you – it isn’t accurate to say that the “comptuer buying market” is the same as Apple’s market. Yet at the same time, carving out the businesses and the non-creative folks and the Wal-Mart shoppers to get a “true market” isn’t the correct approach either.
Alas, at the end of the day, Apple’s market is anyone who _could_ buy a Mac – wether they do or don’t – and that _does_ include businesses and schools and so forth. The fact that Macs have a longer useful life is irrelevant because we are looking at total sales – no matter why they are purchased (new, replacement, etc).
Just my thoughts…
That’s actually good thing, considering one would expect it to drop…
waiting myself. Soon as I saw the latest beta of Parallels yesterday, that’s when I knew I’m getting new macs.
Well, here I sit at my old PC and brand new MacBook, trying to transfer files from the PC to the Mac. As my nick indicates, I’m a Mac newbie, and I know of many, many others just like me. The new Intel machines have definitely sparked the interest in Macs, I can’t believe Apple’s market share won’t rise during this year.
Wait till figures from MacBooks show up. I saw four or five sold to grads from un-mac parents when I was in a suburban apple store; the twenty minutes I was there, the day they came out.
Cubert: I agree — these stats are highly misleading.
me: I think that longer useful life is very relevant since with longer life comes fewer upgrades and hence lower purchase volume in subsequent quarters.
Jess: Agreed. Mac sales will really take off as intel transition nears completion.
There’s nothing wrong with market share is being computed here. The point is that market share is actually less relevant, and for three reasons:
1.
As Cubert pointed out in the very first post above (Congratulatoions Mr. C), Macs last longer. So Apple will sell less replacement computers in any given time period.
2.
Again thanks to Cubert, the “cumputer market” includes businesses, which Apple is not yet persuing (They’re only just getting their feet wet. separate discussion).
3.
Another market that Apple does not persue is the low end. Sales of low end PC’s are diluting Apple’s apparent share in the same way that business sales are.
4. (for developers only)
Software developers, in particular, care less about market share and more about the buying power of the users. The average Mac user has much more purchasing power than the average PC user. The difference between the two can be used as a multiplier along with market share to compute how appetizing Macs are as an application platform. This is closely tied to number 3, above. High end customers have more money, duh.
So, to summarize: Don’t count businesses, Don’t count the low end, Consider the difference in the expected obsolescence between a new Mac and a new PC and, if you’re a developer, consider the extra cash that Mac owners are able to part with.
I would really like to see how the market outlook changes when all these real considerations are actually considered. But where to find those numbers?…
I think we should now take a moment to laugh out loud at all of the idiots who predicted Apple would suffer the Osborne Effect by switching to Intel.
Hear me Enderle?
Cubert and me – you guys are trying to make something bad look good.
All that counts for Apple and any other computer maker is the sales now – not the sales 1,2, 5 10 years ago.
If in the the total of new computer buyers out there fewer are buying Apples each month or quarter that is not good news.
And this theory that Macs last longer…well, sounds good. I have 3-4 working macs…sitting in the closet. Are you guys counting those as part of your big Apple market share?
And did you know there are more people surfing the web using 10 year old Windows 95 than all Apple users combined. So there are some old PCs out there still in use.
This isn’t very surprising news.
Worldwide Mac marketshare is going to actually fall over the coming years.
Why?
The reason is because of countries like India and China, with fast growing economies. People are going to buy PCs there, and the vast majority of them will be very low cost PCs. This is not, Apple’s target market at the moment.
Apple ought to make a very low cost Mac Mini for these markets if they can.
Mac marketshare is what it is and it’s between 2 and 4 percent..
Just because Apple sells more to consumers and less to businesses does not mean the market share numbers are in-correct or unfair to Apple.
Market share numbers represent the WHOLE MARKET, and for the WHOLE MARKET Apple has about a 2-4 percent share.
“Stupid is what stupid does.” — Forest Gump.
The 1st quarter? Let’s see, if they mean 1st quarter calendar year, that is January, February and March. Intel was in ramp up on its production lines and was working out the inevitable kinks. Late in April, Steve Jobs said that Apple would no longer be constrained by vendor shortages. In other words, until that time, Apple was selling everything they could get shipped from Intel. Now they can.
Boot Camp, now talked about as a reason some people are switching to Macs, was announce on April 5th. Does Gartner have a time machine so that the Boot Camp announcement can affect the previous quarters results? Duh!
Given the above, there is no way that first quarter results can yield any information about the probability of Apple’s market share potential. We will likely have to wait for Apple’s mid July 2nd (calendar) quarterly report conference. Even then, sales will be suppressed by the lack of the Mac Pro Intel and a half quarter’s availability of the MacBook.
Is this why AAPL has been dropping? The recognition of the crushing Gumpish stupidity of the anal-ists is why I am not worried about that drop. If their little nitwit brains drive it down to 50, as one poster on this site insists (a bear raider?), I will have to seriously consider buying another one or two thousand shares with some reserve money I have.
The case has not yet been made that Apple will gain any or a lot of market share. There are anecdotal stories of switchers, but that is not reliable for making predictions. But there is no evidence at all presented in this article that Apple is losing share even with its Intel based products — none.
Total sales are up.
Macs are being sold in larger numbers than ever before.
However… that is also true for PC’s. If Mac sales are up 13% and PC’s 15% that is a net loss for Apple however you cut the cake.
Personally I can’t see Apple ever breaking 5%, but is that necessary with a large number of Mac users in their tens of millions? And growing all the time.
I’d rather have 1% of a billion dollars than 5% of a million anyday!!
Linux Guy,
Had you read the entire article you would have known that this was all explained… The article said, In all fairness to Apple the 2nd half of 2006 would be much stronger as the enitre line will have made it through the transition.
mw= Jump
as in don’t “jump” the gun before reading the whole article.
The numbers are not misleading if what you want to know is market share. The percentage of total computers sold that were manufactured by Apple is–by definition–Apple’s market share.
You are talking about installed base, which is a different concept altogether.
I just made finally made the Intel switch a few days ago. Got a maxed-out Core Duo mac mini to replace my G4 mini. It arrives tomorrow. I feel like Santa’s coming.
The deciding factor for me was Boot Camp/Parallels. Now I won’t have to have two computers on my desk (my job is programming in Visual Studio 2005), and I’ll be able to use my 23″ Apple Cinema HD display to do my programming work. (I never owned a PC with DVI so I could never use it before.) I’m really looking forward to using Visual Studio in Parallels without having to leave OS X bliss.
I’m also looking forward to burning DVDs at 8x, and seeing how 2GB RAM + Core Duo Processor improves my experiences in GarageBand, iMovie and iDVD, which were awfully laggy on my 1GB G4 mini. Hopefully scoring an iMovie in GarageBand won’t bring my system to a beachball standstill anymore.
Gartner is owned by Microsoft. (not literally, but they are MS lovers and receive funds from MS – so who cares what they say)
Let me see. The company I work for has 100 employees. They buy 100 PC’s for them. 90 of the employees buy PC’s for home. But 10 of them buy Macs. So out of 200 computers sold, 10 are Macs. 5% market share. But in reality its higher. Apple doesn’t deal with the corporate market. They aren’t really interested in it.
I believe that the market share numbers also every PC used for things like Point of Sale Terminals, thin clients, and every other conceivable use.
It’s not about market share!!!
Apple lost the PC wars long ago when John Scully pulled his treachery and Apple failed to keep innovating while Steve was gone from the company.
All that matters is Apple remains profitable and keeps innovating with new products that it can retain domminance as long as possible, keep it’s stock up so that it can’t be a victim of a hostile takeover.
People love Mac’s, they buy them in droves, big corporate and government buyers like cheap PC’s instead. One is a bigger market than the other, fine, big deal.
Apple couldn’t supply the worlds demand for computers anyway.
Cream is the best part of what comes out when one milks a cow. It rises to the top of the milk, it’s lesser than the milk of course, but oh is so much better.
You said: “Late in April, Steve Jobs said that Apple would no longer be constrained by vendor shortages. In other words, until that time, Apple was selling everything they could get shipped from Intel. Now they can.”
That makes no sense. Now they can what? Sell everything they could get shipped from Intel? Just as you said they had been doing?
The battle over dominance is over. The real question is can Apple survive as a niche marketer? With sales increasing, installed base remaining constant, and a massive mind share that far outstrips is marketshare (It’s amazing how much press Apple gets considering it has 2% of the market), Apple will continue to be around for a long time.
Apple is still profitable, the world is good.