Switch To A Mac analyzes Apple’s market share on a month to month basis during 2005 and 2006 and extracts “relevant metrics from Apple’s earnings reports and product launches over the past several quarters to provide further insight into the matter,” Switch To A Mac reports.
“Apple’s market share is… on a dramtic upswing. In fact, it’s up 24.4 percent year-over-year from August 2005 to August 2006,” Switch To A Mac reports. “Data used in this report has been obtained from NetApplications via Market Share.
Key Percentages:
• Up 27 percent since January 2005
• Up 23 percent since April 2005 (Mac OS X Tiger launched April 29, 2005)
• Up 2.9 percent January to August 2006 – despite Intel transition
“Apple’s market share is on a dramatic upswing with growth of greater than 23.5 percent each month over the past year. Apple will continue to experience market share gains for the remainder of 2006 and beyond. The future is bright for the Apple’s Macintosh and the OS X operating system. Apple has just embarked on a multi-year expansion that will see the company continue to grab market share,” Switch To A Mac reports.
Full article here.
Related articles:
Report: Apple Mac’s OS share stays flat – September 18, 2006
Apple Mac’s 2007 market share climb will dumbfound almost everyone, create mayhem in PC market – September 08, 2006
Apple’s Safari browser market share up 46% year-over-year – September 03, 2006
Apple gaining traction as Mac market share increases – July 31, 2006
Apple market share myths deconstructed – July 22, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 4.8% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
‘Fantastic quarter’ helps Apple double share of U.S. retail notebook market to 12% – July 19, 2006
BusinessWeek: big market-share gains coming for Apple’s Macintosh – June 15, 2006
Analyst: Apple Mac market share primed to explode; iPod Halo Effect to become increasingly important – June 13, 2006
Does Mac market share even need fixing? – June 08, 2006
Analysts: Apple Mac market share to surge by end of 2006 – June 07, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac market share remained relatively flat through beginning of Intel transistion – June 01, 2006
Analysts expect Apple’s new MacBook to drive market share gains in near future – May 17, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
Statistics are fairly arbitrary. But Mac market share IS up! It only stands to rise further.
From what I SEE, the Apple Stores in NYC are PACKED. Especially the new Fifth Avenue store. It’s become a tourist attraction! The location is perfect and having the FAO Schwartz toy store next door doesn’t hurt, either.
My girlfriend and I had some friends visiting from Bulgaria that wanted to see it. They don’t know much about Macs, Macs being a rarity there. I even had to explain what iPods were! BUT, they loved the store and bought a few of the new nanos to bring back for relatives.
Longtime, dedicated PC users I know have been asking more Mac questions, too.
Dual-Boot is Apple’s Trojan Horse!
tipping point, or in the microslug case tripping point, is a strange animal. most tipping points were not seen coming. we may be looking at the wrong metrics. marketshare is probably the most ignorant trailing indicator out there. i think the tipping point has already happened and apple is just fulfilling its rightful destiny. the marketshare numbers will follow 5-10 years after the change has already occurred. the apple stockholders need to either have faith or patience to see their equity rise to its appropriate level.
i believe most people who buy a computer do not make a choice. they buy, some with a whole lot of research in the wrong areas, based on what they don’t know. foremost, consumers who buy a computer don’t know what they are going to do with it. well they think they do but they don’t
itunes/ipod changed that for about 50 million people. it changed what the computer meant to them. itv will do the same thing. changing the landscape one mac at a time would take about 100 years. changing the mindset on what you expect from your computer will change it overnight. it’s ok to evangelize, i do it all the time, but really steve and his very smart people are leading the unknowing to the water and this time they will drink, because apple has figured it out. so this is the real tipping point. it has happened and is waiting for the next family of products change the function of computers from an extension of the functions defined by business and eyetee folks to what you, joe schmuck, want to do. that’s why the ipod is and remains so far in front. what it did for 50 million people, remains to be done for another 500 million. that is a real tipping point. i think the vision of apple is to create a market that dwarfs the business market, rather than compete in it. it is the consumer market and not the computer comsumer market as we know it. there will be no commoditization of devices like in pc’s, but creation of more and more consumer value. the market will grow and tv’s will only be a component, not the centerpiece.
the strategy of sidestepping the small margin (but appeallingly large) business sector is being left to dell and the like. apple is taking over the consumer market. in the book blue ocean strategy, the business market is the red ocean and apple’s strategy is about winning the blue ocean. someone over there has obviously read the book. the issue is not tipping point, but just picking the right ocean.
mw: main….get ready for the main event in the big tent
Still tiny. Now and forever.
Note to Apple: in your quest for switchers, don’t forget about the faithful.
You owe us better quality, better customer care, and a fix for the many, many problems in the iLife suite and other of your own software.
Hey “Wallace the Man”,
You question the credibility of the article. Why don’t you spend the time to actually read it and look at the data?
To Curious:
“Where there things that caused it to take that long? or short?”
Well, I’ve been a PC’er all my life. So naturally, I was used to Windows. I was very impressed by OS X right from the beginning, but found that I had to rethink about the way I compute. For exapmle: I had a very difficuly time getting used to not having windows able to ‘lock’ in full screen. Bugged me alot, but now it seems natural. Just small things like that, that were different from Windows.
“Do you feel that 6 months was a fast transition to OS X? or slow?”
I think it just depends on the person. I know some people who absolutely refuse to even look at a Mac just because of past experiences from 20 years ago. For me, it was a natural progression of “what can I do with this?”, to “What can’t I do with this!”
“What was obvious in the first days?”
Oh absolutely. I knew immediately that it was better. It just took time to explore the possibilities.
“Was only became appriciated after 6 months?”
Nope. I loved some aspects instantly. Others took awhile to grow on me.
I guess it’s hard to explain, but the OS just seems more relaxing. It’s not cluttered or chaotic like Windows. I ENJOY using my Mac.
Follow up note to Apple:
Do you guys ever read your own ‘discussions’ forums?
They’ve been so overcrammed with reports of problems all week that the site has been down more than it has been up.
DO YOU CARE?
And, MDN participants, please don’t tell me Apple’s hardware and software is better than MSofst, or Dell, or HP or any of those inferior products.
That’s not the standard!
The standard is excellence and we are not getting it!
The SwitchToMac guy is right about the Mac’s increase in market share….. but he explains it in a very confusing way.
He keeps referring to quaterly sales figures from Apple but these are only going to have a tiny effect on Net Application’s “share” figures.
Remember these are the results USERS not just users who have just bought a computer.
Using the same figures: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=Y
It’s easier just to say:
Mac OS share:
2004 – 3.25%
2005 – 3.64%
2006 – 4.34%
BTW if you can’t be bothered to tot up the share of all the different Windows flavours over the same period …..I’ve done it for you.
Windows(XP, 2000, 98, ME, NT, 95, CE)
2004 – 96.36%
2005 – 95.98%
2006 – 95.18%
Don’t forget, each 1% market share increase probably means $1 to $2 billion smackers to Apple’s bottom line. Mo money means mo innnovation.
FTA:
I expect the Q4 2006 earnings to demonstrate further Macintosh unit sale growth but to an extent that will blow away market and analysts expectations.
This is just what I have been predicting for months.
I’m glad this site was posted. I just now bookmarked it.
MW: away, as in blown away.
Market share as a whole really is meaningless. One must look at “target markets” to really see the truth. Apple is growing hugely in many markets!
Some sample markets
– education (K-12, higher ed)
– creative (graphics, music, video)
– servers
– programmers
– database designers
– home users
– small business
IGM is running a story claiming that Network Applications’ survey indicates a drop in Apple’s market share.
From IGM’s article:
“Net Applications’ latest survey numbers are out and they show that Apple’s market share has dipped slightly to 4.33 percent. The company’s cumulative share—the number of PPC and Mactel users—hit a high last December when the faithful accounted for 4.35 percent of those measured.
“
While this slight dip may not seem to be a cause for concern to most observers, the fact that Mac usage was steadily growing until this year’s stagnation may be indicative of larger Apple problems. iPod sales peaked at over 12 million units for the 4th quarter of 2005, but have stumbled to 8.5 million and 8.1 million units the most recent two quarters.”
Both interpretations can’t be true. What’s going on here?
IGM is running a story claiming that Network Applications’ survey indicates a drop in Apple’s market share.
From IGM’s article:
“Net Applications’ latest survey numbers are out and they show that Apple’s market share has dipped slightly to 4.33 percent. The company’s cumulative share—the number of PPC and Mactel users—hit a high last December when the faithful accounted for 4.35 percent of those measured.
“While this slight dip may not seem to be a cause for concern to most observers, the fact that Mac usage was steadily growing until this year’s stagnation may be indicative of larger Apple problems. iPod sales peaked at over 12 million units for the 4th quarter of 2005, but have stumbled to 8.5 million and 8.1 million units the most recent two quarters.”
Both interpretations can’t be true. What’s going on here?
I just read the story. I must say it’s very detailed and puts forth the data quite well.
Note that the article now has been updated with supporting data from W3C who’s data also demonstrates 24% growth.
2 month switcher here,
I have Parallels installed, but now use it for just 3 app’s
googles picasa and hello, MSN IM
hoping with the new relationship withh google will see those app’s avaiable for the MAc
HotInPlaya –
Picasas is a good copy of iPhoto. Why not just use it?
Also there has been been an IM client(from MS no less) on the Mac for years. I don’t use it though and opt for Adium for all of my IM contacts.
Regarding Hello, it seems like they’ve created ways to do things that already exist on the mac(built in webserver, etc) and more recently photocasting. While I think its nifty, and some what innovative…..
anyway, I like google…..they are creative, and motivated and also view Apple, like MS does, as their R&D/idea generation wing. should be fun to watch as more Apple like products are cloned for the Windows market.
my .02.
To pr,
Apple will be tackling the business arena much quicker than in 3 years – try under 12 months. Mac OS X Server Leopard will have all the bells and whistles to blow Win 2003 Server/Exchange/SharePoint right out of the water. Check out the Leopard Server web pages, it’s all there, and what’s not specifically mentioned there is already in Tiger Server.
I just hope Apple really goes for it 100% and does a full Switcher type campaign on the business market.
lotus11:
“I had a very difficuly time getting used to not having windows able to ‘lock’ in full screen. Bugged me alot, but now it seems natural. Just small things like that, that were different from Windows.”
You bring up an interesting point. There’s a design philosophy behind why Apple does not encourage developers to “lock in” your screen by having Windows take up all the viewable area. Namely the idea that Apple expects that the applications you use on your computer will interact with each other, and to fully utilize the power of your computer you’ll use multiple applications simultaneously. Full screen applications are a function of an old paradigm of computing, namely when we only ran one app at a time. They are an impediment to multitasking.
In Leopard, Apple will allow you to create multiple “Spaces” or virtual environments to store specific tasks. Say if you’re working on a webpage, you might put your web browser and you’re web editing software in one space, and you’re email, contacts, and calendar in another.
Note that Apple does not completely prevent developers from creating apps that can take over you’re whole screen. You can use full screen mode in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Painter, and many other image editing applications. Note, however, that it is not the default behavior.