“Apple Inc.’s share of the laptop market is growing — the company now sells more than one in every six laptops purchased in the U.S., a research firm said today,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “‘Apple’s definitely up,’ said Stephen Baker, an analyst at Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group Inc. ‘Their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace.'”
“NPD, which collects its data primarily from retail sources and excludes most online and all direct sales, said Apple’s MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops accounted for 17.6% of June’s unit sales, an uptick of more than three percentage points from May’s 14.3%,” Keizer reports.
“Baker attributed the jump in market share to refreshes that both laptop lines recently received,” Keizer reports. “The market share increase pushed Apple past Gateway Inc. into third place on NPD’s list of laptop sales leaders, behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Toshiba Corp. Research firm IDC also has Apple in the third spot; data it released last month put Apple’s share of U.S. sales at 5.6%, far behind leaders HP (28.4%) and Dell (23.6%) but tied with Gateway.”
Keizer reports, “The next move by Apple, said Baker, will likely not be in its computer business — it refreshed the iMac family earlier this month — but on the iPod side. ‘I’ll stay firmly in the path of conventional wisdom and say that it’s iPods next,’ Baker said. ‘They haven’t been refreshed in almost a year.'”
Full article, including speculation about next-gen iPods, nanos, and shuffles, here.
MacDailyNews Take: As always, due to differing methodology between firms and limited measurements, the exact market share percentage isn’t nearly as important as the trend. The trend shown by NPD’s measures (and IDC’s, Gartner’s, etc.) for Apple is positive.