Apple's Share of U.S. PC Market Leaps to 12.9% in 3Q 2011

No surprise there!

I'll wait until after Christmas stats for a nice year-ago comparison.

The real question is how much longer this market will really matter.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Apple is not gonna give up on the mac.

Its a growing segment of a huge market.

And that is before we even consider the strategic value of the mac to Apple's business.

It might as well be OVER 9000!!!!

Steve would have been so proud

Have you seen the cover of the New Yorker?

http://crabbygolightly.com/mt/2011/10/steve_jobs_is_not_god_but_heav.html

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The threat is HP, because of their brilliant management.

If and when Apple hits 25% market share for the personal computer sector I wonder if we'll see a huge increase in malware and viruses on the Mac. That's my biggest concern about an ever increasing market share.

filmantopia said:

The real question is how much longer this market will really matter.

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As long as Apple's market share, but more importantly (for Apple) Apple's sales numbers are growing. 43 percent in the US from last year. That _really_ matters.

Woodcrest64 said:

If and when Apple hits 25% market share for the personal computer sector I wonder if we'll see a huge increase in malware and viruses on the Mac. That's my biggest concern about an ever increasing market share.

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Apple is working on that on two levels: By making it harder to attack applications running on MacOS X, and through sandboxing which makes it harder to exploit successful attacks.

Hi there!

I think the trend will continue, there's no other system that performs as seamlessly as the iMac and MBP.

filmantopia said:

The real question is how much longer this market will really matter.

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If one can make money at it, it matters.

This makes me quite interested to see what happens with HP's computer division. Dell's numbers are falling, and Apple's are rising... If HP's computer division collapses, Apple's in the running to be #1.

Now, how likely it is that HP's business falls apart I don't know, but it's not outside the realm of possibility depending on who takes it over...

filmantopia said:

The real question is how much longer this market will really matter.

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I would say as long as we can still access the file system in OS X ... so another year or two.

thormarketing said:

Steve would have been so proud

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Of course he is...wherever he is

Here's to you, Steve - another mindblowing performance by Apple.

When you consider the almost non existent Apple presence in the corporate market, these figures are really impressive. 12.5% of the overall PC market would represent a really big slab of the consumer market. No doubt Apple would already be number one there.

Surely HP will continue in the computer market. That's a lot of PCs.

Woodcrest64 said:

If and when Apple hits 25% market share for the personal computer sector I wonder if we'll see a huge increase in malware and viruses on the Mac. That's my biggest concern about an ever increasing market share.

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Apple keeps improving security despite the lack of current threats. Mac OS X can be incredibly secure, if developers are smart enough to take advantage of what it offers. For example, you can very easily code your program so it's in the safest operating mode possible, totally isolated from everything else, but at the same time giving specific threads within the application the ability to do what it needs to do, system-wide, whether that is reading files, writing files, or whatever, and only those things. Apple does it now with their own software, having secure, isolated processes doing the potentially dangerous stuff in things like Safari. You can use an exploit in the application, but it doesn't help you do anything dangerous.

The difference between Mac OS X and Windows (historically) is that Mac OS X was designed from the ground up to be a secure operating system. The design methodologies kept security at the top of the list, even in cases where people really weren't thinking yet about new kinds of attacks, but they wanted to preempt them.

Greater market share will certainly attract more attention from malware coders and hackers, but Mac OS X is starting from a higher level of safety.

AdeFowler said:

Surely HP will continue in the computer market. That's a lot of PCs.

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Their profit per PC is a lot smaller than Apple's, though. But yeah, they'll stick around. Only an idiot (like Apotheker) would even consider selling off the #1 PC manufacturing division in the industry.

Raise prices if you have to, kill off the lowest-margin lines if you have to, but you don't quit while you're #1!

As for Apple, I'd sure love to help them break 15%. Where are the new Mac Pros?!

Still wondering where Tim got his numbers from...

Woodcrest64 said:

If and when Apple hits 25% market share for the personal computer sector I wonder if we'll see a huge increase in malware and viruses on the Mac. That's my biggest concern about an ever increasing market share.

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1)25% is very, very far away in my opinion. Probably 2015 at the very earliest with the wind blowing downhill.

2)Malware/viruses/etc already exist on the Mac...and that's at around 10% market share. I would say it's going to continue forever unless Mac share drops below 10%. The coders out there aren't going to wait till Mac hits 25%.


I congratulate Apple on this milestone! I do think it will be very hard for them to crack the 20% milestone unless the Mac prices drop....Apple will have a very tough time convincing the remainder of the market to spend a lot more money on "a computer"...especially considering so much of what is done "on a computer" is internet/web browser related for the common Joe Shmoe.

ericinboston said:

1)25% is very, very far away in my opinion. Probably 2015 at the very earliest with the wind blowing downhill.

2)Malware/viruses/etc already exist on the Mac...and that's at around 10% market share. I would say it's going to continue forever unless Mac share drops below 10%. The coders out there aren't going to wait till Mac hits 25%.


I congratulate Apple on this milestone! I do think it will be very hard for them to crack the 20% milestone unless the Mac prices drop....Apple will have a very tough time convincing the remainder of the market to spend a lot more money on "a computer"...especially considering so much of what is done "on a computer" is internet/web browser related for the common Joe Shmoe.

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The common Joe Shmoe always takes longer to figure things out, but in households with kids we will eventually find multiple devices so every family member can go online in the evening and avoid talking to each other

Everybody will watch their own TV show/film or surf. Kids will do their homework on ipads or macbooks

"Heavy lifting work" will be done on a Mac, but most likely a portable one with a big screen attached and only one per household.

That leaves the pro market and business. MBP run PC and OSX if one wants to, so I see more converts and an MBP Air.

In that field Apple is IMO the best positioned of the top five.

Some bold move like acquiring Adobe would help Apple personal computer business growth and buildup ecosystem. Adobe is so cheap now.

12% Great progress!

I hear people all the time saying Macs have a 3% or 5% market share. Macs are becoming rapidly more popular though, the days of Macs having a 5% market share are long gone!

saturn88 said:

Some bold move like acquiring Adobe would help Apple personal computer business growth and buildup ecosystem. Adobe is so cheap now.

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I don't agree with that. Both HP and Dell are "big IT contract" manufacturers, ie their boxes power/ cripple large institutions. To gain ground in those sectors Apple would have to fundamentally alter their business model ... Or send in the clones.