IDC and Gartner numbers do not jibe with Apple’s double digit U.S. Mac growth

12 years ago

“Apple reported ‘strong double digit growth’ in its Mac sales in the U.S., directly contradicting the earlier estimates published by IDC and Gartner that stated Apple’s U.S. Mac sales fell year-over-year in the June quarter and calling into question the legitimacy of market estimates that the tech media uncritically presents as factual,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.

“Earlier this month, IDC reported that Apple’s U.S. Mac unit sales in Q2 (Apple’s fiscal Q3, the quarter ending in June) fell by 1.7 percent, while Gartner reported a drop in Mac unit sales of 1.3 percent,” Dilger reports. “In Apple’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, however, the company reported a major global surge in Mac sales. “Net sales and unit sales increased for Mac due to strong demand for MacBook Air which was updated with faster processors and lower prices in April 2014 and due to sales of the new Mac Pro which became available in December 2013,” the company reported in its 10-Q.”

“Globally, Apple reported that Mac sales jumped from 3.75 million to 4.41 million year-over-year for its fiscal Q3, a unit increase of 18 percent and a new June quarter record,” Dilger reports. “Apple’s sales figures not only contradict both IDC and Gartner figures, but also both firm’s market conclusions. IDC specifically reported that Apple’s Macs ‘lost market share over the past year. In U.S. shipments, Apple slipped to become the No. 4 PC maker, dropping from the No. 3 spot to come in at 10 percent market share, a 1.7 percent decline.’ … And Gartner’s numbers portray Apple and Lenovo as being even closer than IDC’s, suggesting that there’s no way Apple could have experienced a “double digit” percentage in growth without surpassing Lenovo to become the third largest vendor of conventional PCs in the U.S., behind HP and Dell.”

Dilger writes, “If Microsoft and HP are serious about cutting expenses, a good place to start would be terminating the propaganda-flattery that has dutifully portrayed their failed strategies as “winning” market share rather than losing control of the computing landscape to Apple.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: The bottom line goal of unit share manipulators: Make the average Joe think he’s buying a “winning” product by making Apple products look like they’re “losing.” If the unit share numbers don’t look good for their clients and/or bad for Apple, they’ll concoct other ways to count them until they do.

One thing these shady data massagers can’t hide under tons of questionable data: Apple’s immense profits. That’s why they don’t release monthly press releases on profit share. If they did, they’d be out of business. Profit share, the actual measure of success in a market, is to be ignored at all costs by those in the business of “influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences.”

As we explained back in October 2013:

The well-heeled customer chooses Apple… These are the desirable customers. These are the customers that pay for substantive R&D. These are the customers that matter. This is why they get the world’s first and only 64-bit smartphone. This is, in fact, why they get the world’s modern smartphone in 2007, years before anyone else gets a serviceable knockoff.

These are the customers that pay for not only the best devices, but also for the best apps and services. This is why market share doesn’t matter for Apple and why Apple doesn’t really care about general market (unit) share. This is why the Mac lived while all the others’ PC businesses slowly died during Microsoft’s dreadful Dark Age of Personal Computing. This is why the Mac continues to thrive today. All of the smart and rich people have Macs. Intelligent developers understand this.

In each market in which it competes, Apple owns the only part of market that matters: Consumers with taste, the ability to discern value, and who possess disposable income and the will to spend it. Google, Samsung et al. can have all of the leftovers. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, which isn’t much, not even en masse.

If you have a billion users who settled for your product because it was part of a Buy One Get One freebie, how much content (music, movies, apps, books, etc.) are they going to buy and to how many paid services are they going to subscribe and how much are they worth to advertisers? Pretty much bupkis on all three counts.

We’d rather have the 400+ million (and rapidly growing) customers with the taste, the intelligence to recognize incredible value, and the money and the will to spend it. Wouldn’t you?

As long as you corner the market on the best customers, and there are enough of them to support a healthy business (very healthy in Apple’s case), market share doesn’t matter.