Last year, the iPod was the 800 lb. gorilla of the Holiday spending season. This year, the Holidays are looking like another big win for Apple with their new line of Intel Macs.
The latest consumer spending survey from ChangeWave Research, conducted Sept 26 – Oct 2, shows a huge and still growing pool of consumers reporting they’re more likely to buy one of their new Mac computers equipped with Intel microprocessor chips.
The survey of 3,046 members of the ChangeWave Alliance shows 37% now say they’re more likely to buy an Apple PC because of the Intel chip. That’s nearly double the 19% found in a June 2005 survey, taken at the time of Apple’s initial announcement that they were switching to Intel chips for their Macintosh computer line.
“In a world where a 1% market share change represents $2 billion in sales, we’re forecasting a historic market share shift in the PC space for laptops and desktops with these new Intel-based Macs,” said Tobin Smith, founder of ChangeWave Research and editor of ChangeWave Investing, in the press release. “Market share grabs like this just don’t happen in the PC world. Our numbers say that the Mac is surging. We think it will ‘iPod the PC’ world by this time next year.”
Since the initial rollout of the Intel Macs, Apple laptop purchases have surged among Alliance members – jumping from 4% in January 2006 saying they’d bought an Apple laptop in the past 90 days, to 12% in the current survey. That’s a tripling in just nine months.
The survey did find, however, that Apple’s desktop share had experienced a slight decline in the past 90 days. Going forward, planned Apple purchases for the next 90 days show desktops at 18%, up 4 percentage points, and laptops at 17%, down 2 percentage points.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple unveiled the new Mac Pro 70 days ago on August 7, 2006
In other good news for Apple, nearly nine-in-10 respondents (86%) who have purchased one of its Intel-equipped Macs say they are satisfied with the product, according to ChangeWave. Only 4% said they were unsatisfied.
Since Apple first announced its deal with Intel, ChangeWave Research has been tracking the impact it’s having on Apple PC sales. What ChangeWave has found is a clear pattern of increased likelihood to buy, along with increased actual purchases by consumers.
In other survey findings, Hewlett-Packard improved its share of desktop purchases to 26%, a sizeable increase of 6 percentage points since June 2006. Going forward, HP planned purchases for the next 90 days appear mixed, with laptops at 23%, up 5 percentage points and desktops at 22%, down 4 percentage points.
Dell took another big hit in the survey, as its share of laptops purchased over the past 90 days fell 3 percentage points to 33%. Going forward, Dell’s share of planned desktops plunged 6 percentage points to 40%, its lowest level in over a year, while planned laptop purchases sank 5 percentage points to 36%.
The ChangeWave Alliance is a network of 9,500 highly qualified business, technology, and medical professionals in leading companies of select industries—credentialed experts who spend their everyday lives working on the frontline of technological change. ChangeWave surveys its Alliance members on a range of business and investment research and intelligence topics, collects feedback from them electronically, and converts the information into proprietary quantitative and qualitative reports.
http://www.changewaveresearch.com
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