Gartner: Apple At 6.1% U.S. Market Share, Up 1.5% From Last Year

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif

Gartner has released preliminary market share numbers for 3Q 2006 (calendar, Apple's financial 4Q) which show Apple seeing substantial industry growth at 1.5%. Apple now ships 6.1% of all U.S. "PCs", 4th in the industry behind Gateway (6.4%), HP (23%), and Dell (32.1%). Apple did not place in the top-5 in worldwide PC shipments, so that data was not available.

Gartner notes that the overall U.S. PC market actually experienced a 2% decline year-over-year, so that coupled with Apple's announcment of a 30% growth in Mac shipments last quarter helps explain the dramatic growth.

"Two factors that contributed to the poor performance in the U.S. market were continued weakness in the professional desk-based market, and the carry-over effect from strong sales in the second quarter. Strong sales to the home market, fueled by solid back to school sales and mobile PCs could not offset the decline in other areas." -- Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s Client Computing Markets Group.

Apple indicated yesterday that while reaction to the Mac Pro has been positive, the professional community may be holding off until an Intel-native Creative Suite ships (expected spring 2007). On the flip side, a recent article in a Princeton University newspaper indicates that Apple is indeed doing very well in the growing education market.

Recent research has indicated that Apple is poised to grab even more "switchers" this holiday season, which promises to translate into even more market share.

Of interest, Dell has consistently been losing market share to rival HP in both U.S. and Worldwide markets, and HP took the #1 spot on the Worldwide market with 16.3% compared to Dell's 16.1%.

[lvnmacs]

Slowly but shurely!!!

[thworple]

I would love to know what the worldwide figure is for Apple market percentage. I know it says here that its not in the top 5, hence no available data, but it would be interesting to see, particularly here in the UK, as the amount of people I know who have switched in the last year has been huge!!

[longofest]

Originally Posted by thworple

I would love to know what the worldwide figure is for Apple market percentage. I know it says here that its not in the top 5, hence no available data, but it would be interesting to see, particularly here in the UK, as the amount of people I know who have switched in the last year has been huge!!

I know Apple is doing well, but the problem is the Asian companies that are doing extraordinary in their markets continually kick Apple out of the numbers. You want to buy Gartner's report for MacRumors when it comes out

[prady16]

Always a good sign!

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by prady16

Always a good sign!

yes it is! great news for Apple. I'm excited

[Queso]

I'd like to see the figures just for the UK rather than "international". I'm a firm believer that it's the Apple Stores that are causing the upswing. Outside of the US, the UK is the only country where Apple stores are expanding their reach, which would confirm whether or not my thinking is misguided.

[JDOG_]

This is great news, and that's a lot of macs! I can't help but think part of this is a big group of people waiting to buy a PC until it comes with Vista. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but if I could wait a couple months on the purchase to avoid an imminent ~$150+ O.S. upgrade I would.

[Yannick]

Originally Posted by thworple

I would love to know what the worldwide figure is for Apple market percentage. I know it says here that its not in the top 5, hence no available data, but it would be interesting to see, particularly here in the UK, as the amount of people I know who have switched in the last year has been huge!!

+1

It would be very interesting to see international figures and national figures.

[miketcool]

1.5% woo hoo!! Thats quite a climb!

[zelman]

Does anyone know their marketshare in terms of computers in use?

[clintob]

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Apple's market share increasing.

On the one hand, it's great in that it sort of validates the fact that the machines are better, or at least "cooler" and more fun, than PCs. But on the other hand, it's just the nature of production that the more units you're responsible for creating, the more room there is for error, rush-jobs, and cutting corners.

Apple is, I think everyone here agrees, far superior to PC manufacturers when it comes to quality control (the recent MB problems aside - I give a pass on that since it's really their first ever foray into the Intel-based notebook world which is a different animal altogether). Generally, Apple uses better, more reliable parts, a better overal setup and architecture, and the end result is a faster and more robust machine.

If they can somehow keep those high standards while continuing to grow in the world market I'm all for it. If not, I'm fine with being in that 6-10% range and enjoying my superior machine.

[tophergt]

Do you believe that the perpetual delay of Microsoft's Vista OS is allowing Apple to temporarily grab up some of the markey share? I'm not saying that people who would otherwise purchase a Wintel machine are switching to Mac because Vista is not out, but rather that some percentage are waiting to buy their new Core2Duo machine (or other upgrade to their current box) until they can get an full release version of Vista preinstalled on it.

Just a conjecture, but I thought it was worth considering. I suppose we'll find out in the first two quarters of 2007 when Microsoft decides that they're ready to release that bad boy on the world . . .

[JDOG, your post came in while I was still typing mine . . . sorry for the repeat]

[Mac Fly (film)]

Originally Posted by dynamicv

I'd like to see the figures just for the UK rather than "international". I'm a firm believer that it's the Apple Stores that are causing the upswing. Outside of the US, the UK is the only country where Apple stores are expanding their reach, which would confirm whether or not my thinking is misguided.

Your thinking is not misguided. Now where's our bloody Apple Store in Ireland.

[-hh]

The market share (and Princeton report) are favorable news for the Mac platform and for Apple.

But it is interesting to read this from Gartner, in the light that this very same Company is also in the news right now for their "Macs should be made by Dell" splash (actual paper was "Apple Should License the Mac to Dell")

In conjunction with this articles observation that Dell's PC marketshare has been sliding (lost worldwide #1 to HP, etc), along with business reports that aren't rosey on Dell's margins (nor their get well plan, which isn't working), the newsfolk who picked up on Gartner really got their headline wrong. It really should have been IMO:

"Dell sliding bad - needs rescue in form of Mac licence from Apple".

In said report (the other one, not this one) Gartner suggested that 'Apple should concentrate on what it does best - create software - and make use of Dell's production and distribution infrastructure.' In this report, there's not a peep of such 'black clouds on the horizon' for Apple ... must be two different guys in the Gartner shop

Quite interesting, since the bottom line right now is that the Mac Pro is known to be less expensive than the Dell equivalent, for what does that suggest about expertise in cutting deals with Intel, and efficiently running production & distrubution?

The reality is that Apple generally contracts out much of their manufacturing, true. However, so does Dell. As such, why should Apple bother to pay to go through Dell? That's called using a "Middle Man" and this intermediate step would increase costs, which would then either lower Apple's unit profits, or force them to raise prices ... which hearkens the 'Macs cost more' paradigm.

This is why Gartner's suggestion seems to be more aimed to help Dell through their current fiscal troubles but does not help Apple in any meaningful way at this time.

Perhaps Apple will need Dell for access to Dell's assemblers, but that would only occur when Apple's total market share gets huge - say exceeds 33%. Barring a Vista-catastrophy, at the current rate of market share growth, we're still more than a year or two away from having to cross that bridge, which ironically gives Michael Dell plenty of time to become more retrospective and apologetic about inflammatory comments he has made of Apple in the past.



-hh

PS: if you look more closely at Apple's 3Q numbers, you'll see that desktop sales were relatively flat: the growth was in laptops.

[IJ Reilly]

Originally Posted by tophergt

Do you believe that the perpetual delay of Microsoft's Vista OS is allowing Apple to temporarily grab up some of the markey share?

Maybe, but the "Vista effect" is really just a reminder of how slowly Microsoft moves, compared to Apple. It has always been thus. Long wait, yawn. Long wait, yawn. This is what it means to be a Microsoft customer. Have you heard anyone say that they are anxiously anticipating Vista? Microsoft will try to generate some synthetic excitement over Vista, but in reality, hardly anyone will really care.

The bottom line is, Apple is cool again -- and this is reflected in their sales numbers. This is due in no small part to the iPod, of course.

[Pressure]

Aye, international numbers would be good to see.

Good news for Apple

[tk421]

Woohoo!! This is the first time I can remember that Apple has had over 5% market share!

[p0intblank]

Movin' on up!!!

[longofest]

Originally Posted by miketcool

1.5% woo hoo!! Thats quite a climb!

Indeed. If you look at it a different way, it is a 33% increase year over year for Apple's market share numbers.

How I got to 33%:

% increase_________1.5
---------------- = ---- = 32.6%
old market share____4.6

[IJ Reilly]

Originally Posted by -hh

PS: if you look more closely at Apple's 3Q numbers, you'll see that desktop sales were relatively flat: the growth was in laptops.

As we should expect. Laptops are where the growth is in the PC market today, period. I'd expect Apple's desktop sales to jump in the next couple of quarters, after Adobe ships the Intel version of CS. A lot of users in the pro market are waiting for this.

[plinden]

Although it's not spelled out, Gartner estimate 59 million computers were sold worldwide last quarter. Apple says they sold 1.6 million, so that makes 2.7%. This is up from 2.2% (1.2 million out of 55 million) last quarter.

Still well behind the fifth placed Toshiba's 4.3% (according to Appleinsider)

So if they continue growing at this rate, they won't be in the top 5 for 6-9 months.

[wdogmedia]

Wow...right now Apple's stock is up $4.59.

[scu]

Well my 1300 shares will become 2600 in less than an year. Apple will keep going up and up as long the economy does not tank.

[BornAgainMac]

It is nice for Apple to get above that 5% in something besides iPods. I wonder if Microsoft will ever have more than 5% in mp3 player sales?