“Today, the iPod; tomorrow, the iPhone. Investors Thursday cheered Apple’s record second-quarter results, which showed major sales growth for its iPod digital music device and Mac computers. But Apple’s best days are ahead, tech analysts say,” Jefferson Graham reports for USA Today.
Graham reports, “‘The iPhone has the potential to be even bigger than the iPod,’ says Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. ‘The cellphone market is gigantic.'”
“Charles Wolf, president of investment consultant Wolf Insights, says Apple will likely follow its iPod pricing strategy — starting with a high retail price, and lowering it as costs decrease. ‘Once the price comes down, Apple could get to a 5% market share of phones, good for 75 to 100 million units a year,’ Wolf says,” Graham reports.
Graham reports, “Mac sales have doubled from five years ago, when the iPod was introduced. Wolf believes the iPhone will have a similar ‘halo effect.'”
“‘Now you have another device besides the iPod that will get people interested in Macs,’ says Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research. ‘The iPhone is basically a portable Mac.’ Munster thinks the success of the iPhone could help Apple eventually more than triple its computer shipments, to 5 million a quarter,” Graham reports.
“But Munster says that at his most optimistic, he can’t imagine Apple’s computer market share rising to above 15% in the USA. ‘Apple doesn’t play in the business and government markets, where the really huge sales are,’ he says,” Graham reports.
Full article, with chart of U.S. PC shipment Q1 estimates, here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can imagine Apple’s computer market share rising to above 15% in the USA.
10% would be perfect!
I know some will disagree, but I really don’t care all that much about enterprise. Just get Macs in homes… lots of homes. Look at THAT marketshare. I can see it becoming 50% of home marketshare in a few years. Easily. The enterprise market will follow, eventually, if Steve even wants that market.
“he can’t imagine Apple’s computer market share rising to above 15% in the USA.”
Hmmm, that sounds pretty good to me.
Apple has defied gravity by reaping big margins in the comsumer markets. Just imagine how they will do when they finally have critical mass in the consumer PC market and then attack the lucrative government and enterprise markets.
“But Munster says that at his most optimistic, he can’t imagine Apple’s computer market share rising to above 15% in the USA. ‘Apple doesn’t play in the business and government markets, where the really huge sales are,’ he says,” Graham reports.
It doesn’t matter. Apple’s strategy is to take the cream of computer sales (high margin stuff), and let Dell, GTW, Lenovo, et al feed on the bottom. As Dell is learning the hard way: you can’t make it up with volume.
Isn’t it about time we heard Dvorak claim that “beleaguered Apple” is just about to go out of business? Any day now, John…
15% market share would be huge. But if it got there I see no reason why it would stop.
MDN word = Slowly (but surely)
Hmmmm, actually as far as Apple USA market share, I have seen numbers that indicate that new computer sales for USA consumers for other than bottom level systems makes Apple already in the 10-15 percent level.
Ignore business who buy cheaper machines for use in mega pools. They have a full time IT staff that can support the crap associated with the systems.
Ignore government. When have they ever done anything right.
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Look at college sales cause once you own a Mac you never go back, and look at up and coming young adults and in the know older adults. Its big time Macs, over and over. Bloger after bloger is going Mac to check out the trend and everytime, they are singing the Macs praises.
I think 2007 and 2008 are going to be VERY interesting years.
Neat.
en
Another article which states that S. Jobs ‘projected’ sales of 10 million iPhones ” in a year”, which, of course, he did not.
He said, as we all know, 10 million by the end of 2008, which is about a year and a half.
Why are these tech journalists so sloppy?
Microsoft never got in the front door of enterprises, but in the house of the executive running Lotus 123 and it ran FAST and did things his work terminals could not. IT bows to the senior management or they get fired.
Apple will also get in the Executive’s home and run things Windows cannot. Apple can take this as far as they want. Apple is making use of their diversity in hardware in a way that makes them the only solution provider – this is their killer app.
Chris,
I agree … almost entirely.
But the enterprises are already following.
Macs have gained ground everywhere, but particularly in the universities and even more so in the elite universities, whose students often get key jobs in the commercial world.
Firms are accepting the Mac more and more, for the simple reason that more and more firms are being ‘run’ by Mac users!
There are many parts of the world where only limited iPods are sold and even less computers, but even these areas use mobile phones.
The halo effect of iPhones for making Mac sales overseas has yet to be seen. Now we need a Mac Mini which is affordable in 2nd world countries.
I knew Apple was sand bagging with their goal of 10 million by the end of 2008, but I didn’t think they were off by a factor of more than 10. My guess is 10 million by 2008 and 30 million in 2008.
The next version of OSX is going to run Windows apps natively. If a couple of companies can make Windows emulators for Mac, why can’t Apple? That’s the “one more thing” Steve has up his sleeve.
Let’s see Vista sales after version 10.5 ships.
> he can’t imagine Apple’s computer market share rising to above 15% in the USA.
He does have a very good imagination if he can’t even imagine a scenario where that might happen. Five years ago, many analysts could not imagine Apple market share rising above 10%. Now it’s 15%. Five years from now it (when Apple’s actual market share is well above 10%), the “I can’t imagine” number will be 20% or 25%.
Remember the days when his Steveness referred to the Mac as the DIGITAL HUB to everything? Well, iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV all depend on the Mac (or a PC). Thinking that the Mac is no longer a priority by Apple is ridiculous. Everything depends on the Mac. It will remain the DIGITAL HUB for a long time to come. I don’t know his STEVENESS doesn’t use the term anymore. It’s more relevant than ever.
@Toby Belch:
Well, yeah, I said “and the enterprise market will follow, eventually”, but I didn’t state that very well.
And what I meant about Steve wanting that market — it has a whole different set of headaches for the company, and could make it larger than they want it to be. But we’ll have to just see how that plays out.
If execs love their Macs at home do you think for one minute they’ll be happy with Windows at their business???
Common guys. This is about passion and everything that is decent and enjoyable. No-one who has switched to Mac has ever been happy using Windows again.
And we haven’t even touched on the BIG issue…costs to run these sytems.
Sorry, but this idea that Mac is for the home only is complete garbage.
we should get to small business where not IT types make the decisions.
we should get to small business where not IT types make the decisions.
we should get to small business where not IT types make the decisions.
we should get to small business where not IT types make the decisions.
then we wont ask dumbass munster to use his imagination. haul ass i say. imagination has brought us intel macs, the itunes store, the ipod for mac and pc, the apple tv, the iphone.
if you munster cannot muster up enough imagination to imagine apple figuring a way into the enterprise market (hey, dumbass, they ARE talking with Cisco), then go analyize macdonalds.
x,
what ARE you going on about, dear boy (or girl)?
Magic word: ‘children’. Nuff said!
I think Apple is doing a great job of focusing on the quality conscious consumers. Not all business is good business and Jobs realizes that. Getting the cream off the top and leaving the scraps to the rest is a great strategy.
They have carved out a high margin spot in the PC business, enjoying soaring profits while still maintaining and growing a customer base that loves their products.
Windows people converting to Macs are the ones who are learning that you get what you pay for and immediately realize the extra money spent is well worth it.
To win business in the Enterprise, especially the government, they have to do it with Security. Make sure that OS X is near bullet proof from internet related attacks.
For example be the first Operating System to be 100% resistant to all forms of buffer overflow exploits, which is what was used in that CanSec contest to gain access to the Mac. That exploit will work on Vista to as it is still vulnerable to heap based and some stack based buffer overflow attacks.
Having secure computers in the Government will be the highest priority going forward as their computer systems are receiving a higher number of attacks every year and are getting compromised with similar types of exploits.
Windows XP SP2 or Vista will not be up to the task as proven time and time again.