“Apple revolutionized the personal computer industry with the release of the Macintosh thirty years ago,” J. M. Manness writes for Seeking Alpha. “But the weight of the name of IBM moved MS DOS systems and later MS Windows, both made by Microsoft, to become the standard in business and from there, in the home.”
“However, a report by research firm Gartner, released Thursday evening, says the Mac is making gains, at least in the U.S.,” Manness writes. “Apple moved up almost 4 percentage points in market share [from 9.9% to 13.7%] – a growth rate of 28.5% by units. This is by far the highest growth rate of any major vendor, as most others had shrinking sales. In a sense, this is not really surprising. Last holiday season (2012) Mac sales were hampered by severe shortages of the new iMacs…. [so] it is only natural for this year to show greater growth. ”
“The unanswered question is how the Mac line is doing globally. Unfortunately, Apple does not [yet – MDN Ed.] make it into the top 5 vendor list globally, so we do not get to see Gartner’s figures here. We can, however, try to estimate them ourselves,” Manness writes. “Let us suppose that the foreign growth was greater than that in the U.S. Last year, in the FQ1 conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that overall revenue growth in China was up 67%. Even if we halve this, it would still be well over the U.S rate of 28% unit growth. Of course this is only China, so I will estimate a foreign growth rate of 30%, just slight higher than domestic.”
Gartner: Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q13 (Units)
Note: Data includes desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad. Data is based on the shipments selling into channels. Source: Gartner (January 2014)
“This would give us a figure of 3.085 million, to which we add the domestic for a total of 5.253 million units worldwide. This represents a market share of 5.9% versus 4.6% last year,” Manness writes. “This is a huge jump. Note also, that this is just a shade short of the figures for ASUS – less than 3% short. If Apple growth continues, they may soon be on the chart… To this we should note, as pointed out by astute researcher Horace Dediu of Asymco, while Apple’s unit share is only around 5%, its share of PC profits is around 45%… A lot of this growth seems to becoming from enterprises, the traditional bastions of Microsoft, as companies open up to Macs. If this change in corporate attitude continues, then it is likely that Macs will continue to grow market share well into the future.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The silver lining from The Great iMac Drought of Christmas 2012 appears, but there’s likely more to this than just a rebound effect. The twin halos from iPhone and iPad is moving the needle!
Listen, if you’re an iPhone and/or iPad user and you don’t yet have a Mac: You are missing out. When you have a Mac, not only is it markedly superior to a Windows PC, it is synced seamlessly with your iPhone and/or iPad. Bookmarks, passwords, photos, calendars, and so very much more. If you don’t have a Mac, you’re shortchanging yourself and limiting your iPhone/iPad experience.
Also — and we’ve met only a handful of these people — if you have a Mac, but, for some reason are trying to use an iPhone wannabe or iPad knockoff, WTF are you doing?! Proceed immediately to your nearest Apple Retail Store and ask them to explain all that you’re missing or you can just take our word for it: Get an iPhone/iPad to go along with your Mac – they all work together! You can thank us later.
Related article:
Gartner: Apple’s U.S. Mac sales surge 28.5% as Windows PC market drops 7.5% – January 9, 2014
Say what you want, the Apple Ecosystem really does work nicely. I do wish something would work outside of iTunes, such as pushing videos from a Raspberry Pi to my Apple TV (without jailbreaking), as that would free up space on my mac and let the rPi do its thing.
That said, it seems the history revisionists have no problem arguing that Apple “is trying to lock you in their world” while, at the same time, these same douchebags used to DEFEND Microsoft for locking everyone into Windows Media files, suggesting that they were simply trying to standardize everything. WMA/WMV files were proprietary. Completely.
Sorry. Somehow ran off on a tangent…. 😀
The big seller is the 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, it has hit the sweet spot now in pricing.
Once you get used to Retina, anything else gives you eye cancer.
Eye cancer? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
I thought Windows 8 was officially copyrighted Eye Cancer.
MDN take…. To this day it baffles me as to the utter stupidity of users who have been introduced to the Mac purchase a JUNK phone & to add insult to injury blame the Mac for not properly talking to the Junk phone. Idiotic to say the least.
It would be very cool if Macs hit 5m units in the quarter. Will add to revenue and margin significantly. At some point the market will wake up and pump the stock up a bit since this is not factored into the price at the moment.
Remeber when Jobs’ target was 5%…?
Sure, that’s why the stock is up so much today.
Max Pain is January 14. The shorts will be killed if AAPL doesn’t bottom at 525. Damn, I’d love to see them killed!
Don’t options expire on Friday? January 14 is a Tuesday.
Good news didn’t encourage AAPL stock purchases? Who’d have thunk.
BAD news is apparently FAR more motivational. That’s why all this blatant AAPL manipulation actually succeeds. Run Away Little Sheep! Apple’s gonna die! That bullshit’s been going on since 1984 and look at Apple now: #1 on the planet.
ScArY!
I have an iMac as well as other Apple products and love them. However, I do not use an iPhone as the screen is too small and there are too many other shortcomings. I use my phone more than my iMac so I had to look elsewhere. If only I could have an improved iPhone with a decent sized screen I would be extremely happy to have the benefits mentioned above.
You don’t know improve.
???
Not sure what that mean? Improve means to get better.
An iPad mini will work as a phone and it is bigger and better than that crappy Samsung shit you are using now. Think of all the Apps. Think of how nothing will fit in your pockets.
Actually the phone I am using fits very nicely in my pockets as comfortably as my old iPhone. I also have all the apps I used to use on my iPhone, they just look and work better on the larger screen. The iPad mini is too large for my pockets and as a phone so that point is meaningless. Also, I did not even mention Samsung it was irrelevant for the point I was making. As for being crap, the phone I am using has proved far, far more productive,reliable and enjoyable for what i need it for. If a new iPhone came out that could come even close to performing as well, I would buy one immediately as it would compliment the rest of my electronic gear at home, which was the point I was making.
I just want to know what Colin means by “better”. That’s so subjective. What are you doing on your preferred phone that the iPhone is worse at. Besides screen size. I understand that.
A good quality, larger screen size makes most aspects of using a phone better for me, so I cannot go back to using a very small screen now. However. the major reasons why my current phone, for me is better than an iphone, in addition to screen size are as follows:-
Significantly better battery life;
Can replace the battery;
Better reception for wifi and phone signal;
More reliable (In my family we have had 5 iphones all have had problems with sound).
In addition to this it has proved more durable, I have been able to set it up to get the most out of the phone for the way I use it, I prefer the camera and I find that notifications are superior to the iPhone.
In other areas like speed, stability and smoothness, I see little difference, so the downsides of the iphone are not outweighed by many positives.
silverhawk1 fancies himself (or her – who knows?) as cute with the cryptic comments. Although most of the time you are just a “troll” – that’s about all he/she has to offer in the MDN world.
Incorrect! silverhawk1 is one of our regular, speaks his mind, regulars who has REGISTERED here at MDN, UNLIKE YOU: Generic anonymous coward troll “Jay Morrison”, he or her who knows. For all we know, “Jay Morrison” is just a fake nick used by a gang of marketing scum at Samsung in order to FUD Apple gear. IOW: Nothing new.
Or to put it another way: STFU until such time as you DARE be a REAL person around here. I certainly am. How about getting brave enough to tell us who you REALLY are? Think you can do that? DARE to register here under your real name? Hmm? Come on you little coward. Prove us all wrong.
(I know. Not gonna happen. Why bother taunting he or she who knows blahblahblah? Because superior communication requires the use of the native language of the person you’re talking to, in this case bully-talk. AND it’s fun to kick cowardly bullies in the balls where it hurts. Maybe they’ll get the clue to go home with their tail between their legs until such time as they get on the path of becoming their best positive selves and have something/anything to help and contribute to others.)
(It could happen!) 😉
This comes after anal-ists predicted that Mac sales would continue to fall. Apple proves them wrong again as usual!
best analysis article projects 5.2 M macs sold worldwide, just a few thousand behind ASUS. Apple could take the #5 spot next quarter!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1938441-apple-mac-worldwide-surges-almost-takes-fifth-place
Remember last week’s FUD about downloads of OS X 10.9 Mavericks slowing in December?
Add the Mavericks download figure to the number of new Macs sold, all of which have Mavericks installed, and THAT will tell you how many new Mavericks users there were in December.
IOW: DARN! Fewer downloads of free Mavericks! Offset by SALES of Macs!!! That’s just horrible. 😉
😆 😆 😆