Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Maintains Mac Sales Momentum Amid Overall Worldwide PC Market Decline
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Did they? I bought a 2015 MacBook Pro Retina and love it.But Macrumours readers told me that the new Macs suck and no one would want them.
I should restate. Half an hour for any given issue or some basics. Not everything, no way, that would take much longer and having to research each issue.
Have I ever had to do that? Yes! So many times for different issues and yes, fixing the issues takes far longer than half an hour. That is just research. There is a reason I want some people to use a tablet, chromebook etc.. just anything that they cannot kill. I just ran into someone that has been using a computer for almost twenty years and said they don't know how to resize a window my grabbing it. What!? That is day one type of knowledge.
I have done countless formats because their system is just so messed up it was the only hope. It is also a lot of fun trying to help someone that really will not listen to what is important. Most of these issues are for people that are careless and have no idea how to maintain their system. There will be a time I will not have hours to maintain someones system (they are close) I just do not understand not learning more basics are just doing research. Have an issue, look it up. I still have to do that because there are always new issues.
The current people are good about not getting malware etc... on it yet I still have to do backups, updates, scans because they never do for some reason. Their file system is also a complete mess. Order people, order!!!
Or more updated chip architecture, or first rate cooling, or a power supply that delivers the needed wattage as specified on the processor spec sheet, or so on, but most people honestly don't need powerhouse laptops anymore. Especially when, for web browsing, all the load is shifted to the server somewhere else - like what Siri does despite the phone having a processor sufficiently capable to convert speech to text (and then transmit the text to the server farm to do the processing and response as that would save a lot of 4G bandwidth compared to compressing the audio, sending it over, then doing all the work there.) But I digress: If the laptop isn't used heavily it won't get hot enough to have its lifespan reduced, thus maintaining longevity. Gluing in the battery then helps make it quicker to replace the laptop instead of repairing it, once it starts to fail - not the most environmentally friendly solution either, but it works.
I should have become an engineer instead...
One thing stopping me down the line from a Macbook (side from price depending on the model) is that another PC for less will end up having better specs, a touch screen and have something like wacom (which I want) Unless I stop worrying about wanting an all in one and just have different devices for different tasks.
Apple is winning
Let's pretend Apple support forums, the support forums on Macrumors, etc, all don't exist because Macs are so perfect that no Mac user has ever had a single problem, regardless of how teensy: Macs lock up too, Macs have the constantly rolling beachball cursor, the fact Mac firewalls and anti-malware solutions exist as well... I too own and use Macs - in ways they are better (no registry, Unix-like OS (based on FreeBSD with NeXT-originated APIs), robust and cheaper Intel hardware, etc), but anyone using Google or Yahoo can find the same information anyone can: Windows is not the only platform that gets malware, of which a virus is one aspect of. Anything FreeBSD-based can't get the type of virus Windows can. But lots of malware exist. And "security via obscurity" can only go on for so long. It might be ironic if you actually received payload and didn't realize it for months...
The real money comes from infiltrating servers as well.
Last edited:
7.5% isn't "just over 5%". It's fifty percent more than 5%. And it's 7.5% of unit sales. That's where a 15" Retina MBP and a cheap $299 laptop both count as one unit. I'd say with 7.5% of units Apple probably has 25% of the revenue. And even two years ago or so, Apple was estimated to have 45% of all the profits in the world wide computer market, today that number will be a lot higher. And even before that, there were numbers around like "90% of all laptop sales above $1000".
Depends upon how you define "the market".
The worst collapse in the PC market recently has been in traditional mini-tower PCs and the corporate market. That affects Dell & HP badly. Apple's market share has long been concentrated in laptops and small-form-factor for home, BYOD and education. So yeah, if the corporate/minitower market tanks, Apple will gain market share at the expense of HP & Dell without having to do much.
Further evidence - Lenovo and Asus seem to be the go-to suppliers of Windows laptops these days, and they've also done comparatively well.
It's interesting that people here see what they want to see, and only that.
To me, the graph says that while yes, Apple is the only company to have shown growth (good for them), it was also rejected more.
Users chose both Dell and HP machines roughly twice as many times as they did Apple, each, given all three are in the market and available at the same time.
This does not necessarily speak against Apple's device quality.
But it still shows that the market is significantly choosing Apple's competition.
I believe this to be for several reasons:
1. Windows 10 is good.
2. PC hardware variety and flexibility is trumping Apple's rigid, minimalist device choices. HP and Dell are putting out decent machines that do things Apple can't or just chooses not to.
3. Price: The masses can do what they need on a PC and don't have to shell out top dollar for merely better looking (and not necessarily better performing) hardware
4. Apple is positioning itself as a luxury brand. Their inroads into fashion (the iWatch), hiring Angela Ahrends (who comes from that world), and their increasing focus on form over function is making them more like Mercedes Benz, where Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others are like Toyota, Honda, Ford, etc. brand-wise, that is.
In other words, it's still a car, and its basic functions are the same (take you places and carry stuff), but the how and how-much-it-costs varies.
Thus, a PC is a PC, and I think that the Wintel platform is both sufficient and preferable for most people given choice and cost, which is what the data seems to support.
I believe that Apple would benefit from increasing device choice, and either reducing their cost or bringing back the value they used to have by focusing as much on functionality as they do on aesthetics. I think this is the piece they lost when Steve died, and went straight for fashion while ignoring function.
To me, the graph says that while yes, Apple is the only company to have shown growth (good for them), it was also rejected more.
Users chose both Dell and HP machines roughly twice as many times as they did Apple, each, given all three are in the market and available at the same time.
This does not necessarily speak against Apple's device quality.
But it still shows that the market is significantly choosing Apple's competition.
I believe this to be for several reasons:
1. Windows 10 is good.
2. PC hardware variety and flexibility is trumping Apple's rigid, minimalist device choices. HP and Dell are putting out decent machines that do things Apple can't or just chooses not to.
3. Price: The masses can do what they need on a PC and don't have to shell out top dollar for merely better looking (and not necessarily better performing) hardware
4. Apple is positioning itself as a luxury brand. Their inroads into fashion (the iWatch), hiring Angela Ahrends (who comes from that world), and their increasing focus on form over function is making them more like Mercedes Benz, where Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others are like Toyota, Honda, Ford, etc. brand-wise, that is.
In other words, it's still a car, and its basic functions are the same (take you places and carry stuff), but the how and how-much-it-costs varies.
Thus, a PC is a PC, and I think that the Wintel platform is both sufficient and preferable for most people given choice and cost, which is what the data seems to support.
I believe that Apple would benefit from increasing device choice, and either reducing their cost or bringing back the value they used to have by focusing as much on functionality as they do on aesthetics. I think this is the piece they lost when Steve died, and went straight for fashion while ignoring function.
I am not following you...I said :
and you replied agreeing that in the USA they are/were around 7% and now they are at 12.8% yet worldwide they are/were 7.5%....your numbers match mine.
All I was saying is that, for a bunch of reasons, Macs for the past 20+ years have been at 7-15% marketshare. And I stand firm (because I've made the above point decades ago) that Macs will continue to be 7-20% forever unless Apple makes serious changes to the Mac reputation (among other things: price, selection of models, true business Support, and OS licensing). As many have mentioned here over the years to my points, Apple likes to make hefty profits on sub-par technology (5400 RPM drives, old Intel chips, etc.) and would (seemingly) rather sell a lot less Macs yet make far greater profits on those Macs.
The Windows PC will have better specs, is often subsidized by bloatware installed by the company selling it, and more Windows-based PCs also means lower cost due to more healthy competition.
Touch screens - meh. Fingerprints, yet another thing that can be worn out quickly... can be helpful in many situations, but tapping on a solid piece of glass with no tactile springy functionality hurts a lot quicker than an actual tangible keyboard.
But it depends on the need as well. Forgetting that even modern lower-end notebook chipsets from Intel are very powerful compared to pre-Sandy Bridge days, most people don't need the processing power desktops allow. Even for my 3D or video rendering projects, I do the basic object placement on a laptop if I'm away and then render the whole project on the desktop, saving a ton of time and on a computer with proper cooling mechanisms too. Few laptops are made with cooling in mind and they'd be a lot thicker if they were. The money saved from a high end laptop can go into better desktop hardware.
Most people use laptops for business - word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, web applications. None of those is system-intensive. OS X is, in ways, more robust than Windows. And while malware is a problem, known incidents are far fewer. Granted, my Windows machines not been hit by malware in over a decade and a recent media-reported issue had affected Linux, et al, but Windows was not affected - something about SSL or HTTPS or something... it's a reminder that no platform is immune. And how servers are more readily attacked. And when it comes to the masses, phishing - via emotional massaging of users or mimicking official sites and luring people to divulge their credit card info are more common since that's easier than true hacking, if not fleeting too...)
This has been true of Apple for over a decade. I don't remember a single point in time where an Apple computer offered the most cutting edge specs at competetive pricing. They have always been a bit behind the cpu cycle (ever since switcing to intel anyway), always charged too much for bto upgrades, but also always privided the best build quality and always lasted way way longer than any pc counterpart. Today this is true as it was 10 years ago.
I agree with most of what you said...some of my points:
1)Apple has seemingly acknowledged almost a decade ago that it no longer cares about Macs but it is a % of very loyal customers in the Apple business model. Clearly, Apple does not care about any kind of desktop.
2)Apple is like other large companies that likes to say THEIR year over year numbers increased, however, that's a bit of a moot point if those numbers don't translate into HOW THEY COMPETE IN THE MARKET. For example, stating that Apple sold 10% more Macs in Q4 than last Q4...ok, great...instead of selling 1 million Macs you sold 1,100,000. But the rest of the PC manufacturers sold many many millions. That is an example...I'm not connecting my numbers to the current article/survey.
3)Apple seems to concentrate on high margins...whether they sell 5 Watches or 500. If Apple can get customers to fork over high (some may say outrageous) prices for products so Apple can make a very high margin, Apple will do it.
4)I would love for Apple to grab 20-30% market share...but I doubt it will ever happen. See my points in a reply I made a few mins ago in this thread.
It would be interesting to see this split up into corporate sales and private consumer sales. That would probably create a bit more clarity into who is actually buying Macs.
I was actually talking about worldwide. Symbian was the dominant platform for a long time. I don't believe iOS ever had more than 21-22% worldwide.
Android eventually overtook Symbian... but they were both ahead of iOS.
But yeah... iOS has certain specific markets where it is the big cheese.
No worries... this helps my point: a platform with less than 20% is still pretty darn popular for developers!
For sure!
It always impresses me that they take the lion's share of profits with such a small share of the market.
& despite all the claims that they are more expensive - their prices are right in line with other flagships. I know people like to trot out the Nexus... but a single phone out of thousands, that is purposefully sold at cost is hardly a fair comparison.
That article pertains to the .001% of all consumers and probably 5% of Pro-sumers. He's using the Mac for what the Mac, a very, very long time ago, had a monopoly on: video editing. The article is pure niche. On a side note, in my 30+ years of using Macs and Wintels, I have never heard of someone buying a new system every 18 months...unless it was a business machine, money was limitless, and it was super mission critical to the business. Over the past few decades, most consumers of Wintel and Macs probably swap after 3 years *if* they actually need to and if they can swallow the cost.
Amid an overall decline in worldwide PC shipments, Apple is the sole manufacturer that saw positive shipment growth, according to new PC shipping estimates from Gartner. With worldwide PC shipments from Lenovo, HP, Dell, ASUS, and Acer down, Apple also broke into Gartner's list of top 5 worldwide PC vendors for the first time.
Gartner's Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q15 (Thousands of Units)
During the fourth quarter of 2015, Apple shipped 5.7 million PCs, for 7.5 percent market share. That's up from 5.5 million PCs and 6.7 percent market share in the year ago quarter, for an overall year-over-year growth of 2.8 percent. Worldwide PC shipments totaled 75.7 million units in Q4 2015, an 8.3 percent decline, with Acer and Lenovo seeing some of the biggest drops.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q15 (Thousands of Units)
In the United States, Apple saw more significant growth of 6.5 percent, shipping an estimated 2.2 million PCs in Q4 2015 for 12.8 percent market share. That's up from 2 million PCs and 11.6 percent market share in Q4 2014. When it comes to U.S. PC shipments, Lenovo saw significant growth with 2.1 million shipments, while ASUS maintained status quo with 1.2 million shipments. HP, Dell, and manufacturers in the "Other" group that comprises non top-5 vendors, all saw a decline in shipments.
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-4Q15 (Gartner)
Overall PC sales in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2015 were at 16.9 million, a decline of 3.1 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. According to Gartner, PCs were not a top holiday gift item.For the full year, Gartner estimates Apple shipped a total of 20.7 million PCs worldwide, ranking the company as the number 5 worldwide PC vendor for 2015. That's up from 19.6 million total in 2014, for a total growth of 5.8 percent and a 7.2 percent share of the market. Lenovo was the market leader in 2015 with 57 million shipments, while HP was second with 52 million and Dell and ASUS were third and fourth with 39 and 21 million shipments, respectively.
IDC also released its own estimates of Apple's worldwide and U.S. PC shipments during the fourth quarter of 2015, which are surprisingly close to Gartner's numbers considering the two firms' estimates typically differ significantly. IDC also estimates Apple shipped 5.7 million PCs during the quarter, for 7.9 percent market share. Like Gartner, IDC ranks Apple as the number 5 worldwide PC vendor.
For U.S. shipments, IDC estimates Apple shipped 2.2 million machines for a 12.7 percent share of the market. Both Gartner and IDC rank Apple as the number three PC vendor in the United States, below HP and Dell. IDC's shipment estimate for the full year also matches Gartner's, with Apple responsible for 20.7 million shipments and 7.5 percent market share, up from 19.6 million shipments and 6.3 percent market share in 2014.
It's important to note that data from Data from Gartner and IDC is preliminary and the numbers can shift. Last year, for example, Gartner predicted PC shipments of 2.1 million and 11.7 percent market share for Apple in 4Q 2014, later revising that number to 2 million shipments and 11.6 percent market share.
Gartner and IDC both position Apple as the sole top vendor that saw positive worldwide growth in 2015, and the same trend could continue into 2016. Apple is expected to refresh many of its Macs during the year, introducing significant upgrades in the form of Skylake processors for most machines.
Article Link: Apple Maintains Mac Sales Momentum Amid Overall Worldwide PC Market Decline
PC Does Whaaaat?
Massive fail.
More than 10 years ago, I purchased one of the original Intel based iMacs choosing as good a machine as I could afford. I never had any hardware related issue in the years I owned the iMac. It ran OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard which many consider to be Apple's most stable release of OS X. Honestly, it just worked and worked and worked.
A little over a year ago, I had some extra cash and decided it was time to upgrade. After all, I was having problems finding software which still ran on the machine. Because my old iMac had lasted 9 years, I again decided to purchased a top of the line 27" iMac with a 3.5 GHz i7, 3 TB Fusion Drive and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB. This machine is incredibly fast and the hardware works flawlessly (something I cannot say about the latest versions of OS X). It simply is the best computer I have ever used and I expect it to last 8 more years. My comparison includes many Windows based PC I have owned and/or used over the years.
Apple Mac hardware is the best hardware that can be purchased today, PC or otherwise. Apple doesn’t just upgrade for the sake of upgrade. When they think new components are stable and better than current components, we see a refresh. To say Apple hardware is outdated ignores the new MacBooks and all the refreshes to other models.
Oh, and that old iMac? A daughter of a friend came to visit one day and saw the computer sitting on a table in the corner. She asked what I was going to do with it and I said I had tried to donate it but got no takers. She said I know a school would be glad to take it. That iMac, over 10 years old now, is being used daily in an elementary school in the Philippines.
A little over a year ago, I had some extra cash and decided it was time to upgrade. After all, I was having problems finding software which still ran on the machine. Because my old iMac had lasted 9 years, I again decided to purchased a top of the line 27" iMac with a 3.5 GHz i7, 3 TB Fusion Drive and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB. This machine is incredibly fast and the hardware works flawlessly (something I cannot say about the latest versions of OS X). It simply is the best computer I have ever used and I expect it to last 8 more years. My comparison includes many Windows based PC I have owned and/or used over the years.
Apple Mac hardware is the best hardware that can be purchased today, PC or otherwise. Apple doesn’t just upgrade for the sake of upgrade. When they think new components are stable and better than current components, we see a refresh. To say Apple hardware is outdated ignores the new MacBooks and all the refreshes to other models.
Oh, and that old iMac? A daughter of a friend came to visit one day and saw the computer sitting on a table in the corner. She asked what I was going to do with it and I said I had tried to donate it but got no takers. She said I know a school would be glad to take it. That iMac, over 10 years old now, is being used daily in an elementary school in the Philippines.
If so then where do we get the next generation of computer engineers from to carry on making new innovative products?
You don't need to know how a car is screwed together to drive one but it sure helps when you are thrashing it down the open road if you realise the limitations.