Apple Maintains Mac Sales Momentum Amid Overall Worldwide PC Market Decline

[TallManNY]

1)I have never had direct experience with Toshiba but from my understanding, their stuff is basically someone's 3rd or 4th choice for a product.



2)Do you mean high end computers? What do you think powers the world (data centers, IT rooms, "the cloud", and anything that would be classified as a "server")? It sure ain't Macs!! If you're talking about Executives' choices for laptops, trust me, Wintel will live on forever. I agree Macs are sexier and sleeker but there are 39 other reasons why an Executive can't/won't buy a Mac. I have friends high up in numerous 50,000+ employee companies who have found some very, very nice Wintel ultrabook-type machines that are so powerful, thin, light, and functional that people have actually stopped using iPads...which I find astonishing.

Yeah, I meant the ultrabook-type. My Toshiba costs about $1,300 and is pathetic. Windows 8 made everyone in the office mad. Our IT guy won't upgrade us to Windows 10 until he is sure the bugs are out. It is a mess.

Please suggest a better Ultrabook for when my Toshiba gives up the ghost. Though now my office all has docking stations for these pieces of crap, so I'm not sure we can easily pivot.

One of my points is that if you look at Mac sales, those are all basically Ultra-Books. Are any of the PC manufacturers making and selling a similar number of Ultra-Books or are their per unit sales skewed higher because of sales of $500 to $800 laptops?

By the way, if anyone wants to chime in with a suggestion for a PC ultrabook that is comparable to a Macbook Pro in build quality, I'm all ears. I wonder what those executives are using. What should my company have bought instead of these Toshibas?

 

[dk001]

People want good laptops. Period. Not hybrids or any of that garbage that turns into a tablet with 2 hour battery life. They want the best experience on the best hardware.

...
Honestly I'm not sure that PCs can stay in business for high level equipment. They have to skimp because they sell on price. But the users don't actually care about price when they have important stuff to get done.

Yes and No.
Issue as I see it. Wife needed a new laptop - her Vaio died an ugly death. So off to Best Buy / Fry's Electronics while referencing Amazon we went.
Ugh.
It was either cheap and junk or good and expensive. The middle of the road decent for a decent price pc was pretty much extinct. When you get into that range, even a Mac becomes an option.

 

[Gudi]

This is surprising news as almost the entire Mac line appears now obsolete.

... to someone who already bought a Mac in the last five years. If you buy your first Mac or think about upgrading from a C2D, USB2, HDD, ODD Mac without Retina Display, they are not.

 

[ericinboston]

Yeah, I meant the ultrabook-type. My Toshiba costs about $1,300 and is pathetic. Windows 8 made everyone in the office mad. Our IT guy won't upgrade us to Windows 10 until he is sure the bugs are out. It is a mess.

Please suggest a better Ultrabook for when my Toshiba gives up the ghost. Though now my office all has docking stations for these pieces of crap, so I'm not sure we can easily pivot.

One of my points is that if you look at Mac sales, those are all basically Ultra-Books. Are any of the PC manufacturers making and selling a similar number of Ultra-Books or are their per unit sales skewed higher because of sales of $500 to $800 laptops?

By the way, if anyone wants to chime in with a suggestion for a PC ultrabook that is comparable to a Macbook Pro in build quality, I'm all ears. I wonder what those executives are using. What should my company have bought instead of these Toshibas?

I can try to get you the exact models...but most were a line of Dell laptops that have been around the past 2 years. I think the Latitude model. I saw it in use and I was really impressed over the size, weight, quietness, and it's sleekness, and I believe it had an i7 chip. I recall looking into it and the price was around $1600 before any discounts/coupons/sales...that may be close to some of the Mac prices but these ultrabook-style computers are aimed at people who WILL pay the premium.

 

[Sy7ygy]

I don't have to imagine. I can go to the Apple Store today and see the best computers on the market bar-none.

Keep telling yourself that.

 

[AustinIllini]

Keep telling yourself that.

I don't need to tell myself. I can witness it.

Windows is still so far behind.

 

[JackANSI]

Isn't this the same analytics/statistics company that produces "unreliable" and "wildly inaccurate" numbers when it comes to reporting anything negative about Apple products?

Now that it is a "good" number I see lots of people who trash them doing the "I told you so!" kiddie dance.

 

[TallManNY]

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.

These are all good points. But I strongly suspect that Price is the main driver. After that Windows program compatibility (on the consumer side gaming and on the commercial side enterprise software and integration). After that the other points, while valid, probably have little impact.

The Apple sells because it is "cool" is a tired and, I believe, largely wrong analysis.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I'm pretty sure Macrumors didn't say that.

As a side note, OSX market share world wide is just over 5%: https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0. To put that in perspective, there are still more than twice as many users still using windows XP...

I don't think that's an even remotely accurate source of information. According to it:

2.79% of people use Snow Leopard and 2.59% of people use Lion. Mountain Lion has 0.01% and 0.04% of people use OS X, no version specified. Note that Mavericks, Yosemite, and El Capitan are all completely missing from the chart.

And it's not just OS X.

The chart says that more people use XP (46.86%) than 7 (37.54%), some people use 8 (0.11%), and nobody uses 10.

This information seems like it's either very dated, since 7 topped 50% and XP dropped under 20% according to most other sources years ago, or like they have a very limited data set. I suspect that it's simply old data, since current OSs are so severely under represented. I suspect it's from early-middle 2012, when Mountain Lion and 8 were each in beta test, but not yet released.

 

[Sy7ygy]

I don't need to tell myself. I can witness it.

Windows is still so far behind.

That's just delusional.

I love my MacBook, but I am under no illusion that it is both overpriced for what it is. The same could be said for the majority of Apple hardware - with exception to the Mac Pro which truly is a marvel.

The fact is, Windows 10 is a damned good Operating System & best of all Microsoft have the backing & corporate infrastructure to not only support the machines en-masse in a business environment but also push forward on the consumer front.

The PC will never die - & hopefully, neither will the Macintosh.. but the latter is up to Apple and their consumer driven, hipster madness.

 

[AustinIllini]

That's just delusional.

I love my MacBook, but I am under no illusion that it is both overpriced for what it is. The same could be said for the majority of Apple hardware - with exception to the Mac Pro which truly is a marvel.

The fact is, Windows 10 is a damned good Operating System & best of all Microsoft have the backing & corporate infrastructure to not only support the machines en-masse in a business environment but also push forward on the consumer front.

The PC will never die - & hopefully, neither will the Macintosh.. but the latter is up to Apple and their consumer driven, hipster madness.

None of this addresses the fact that Apple machines are overall superior in hardware and software. I don't care if it is overpriced, that's not what I'm refuting.

 

[TallManNY]

I can try to get you the exact models...but most were a line of Dell laptops that have been around the past 2 years. I think the Latitude model. I saw it in use and I was really impressed over the size, weight, quietness, and it's sleekness, and I believe it had an i7 chip. I recall looking into it and the price was around $1600 before any discounts/coupons/sales...that may be close to some of the Mac prices but these ultrabook-style computers are aimed at people who WILL pay the premium.

Thanks. I will look at Dells again if and when we switch. The wide spread failures of these Toshibas (less than two years in I might add) will probably cause us to, or at least phase them out by issuing something else as new employees come on board or as these things break. An extra few hundred dollars for a machine that should last several years in meaningless when you think about it.
Incidentally, prior to my Toshiba I had a "nice" HP which I got in 2013. It looked nice and had a nice screen. But it also had less than three hours battery life. That was pathetic for laptop that cost more than $1,000 and was bought new in 2013 (I think it was right before Broadwell CPU though, but still, pathetic).

 

[rdlink]

The really funny thing is that in just pure raw numbers, there are millions and millions more PCs still running XP and Win 7 than the total installed base of Macs worldwide. In case anyone hasn't noticed, a lot more desktop and laptop computers reside outside the borders the of the USA than in.

So what's your point? That the numbers you reference prove that market share means little, and profit and sustained sales mean everything? Your statement is an absolute sign that nobody is making any money off of PCs. Microsoft stopped licensing Windows XP to OEMs and selling retail versions 8 years ago. That means that it's very likely that any PC running Windows XP was sold prior to 2008. MS stopped licensing and selling Windows 7 in 2014. That means that the vast majority of computers running it were likely sold over two years ago.

The point of the article was that, while PC sales overall continue to decline (not to mention that profits from those PC sales are anemic) Apple's PC sales continue to climb, and they continue to make a healthy profit off of them. And their customers are much more satisfied with their purchase than PC customers.

People tend to buy PCs because they have to. They buy Macs because they want to. You tell me which segment you'd rather be selling.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I think the PC market, which was in steady decline even before tablet and smartphone sales surged, is getting pummeled by handheld and mobile devices that just do a better job in a more adaptable format. Not that every tablet can replace a laptop, just that for what most people want and need to do a tablet does the job well. I know if I was in the market for a PC, it'd be the Surface Pro 4 or some variation on the combo tablet laptop thing.

Ultimately, I see a lack of uniqueness as a major problem. A whole lotta "me too" devices all running Windows 10. What makes me want a Surface Pro over an offering from Lenovo or HP? The fact that Microsoft made both the hardware and software and the ecosystem.

Which is keeps Mac users on the Mac and keeps the marketshare growing.

 

[nt5672]

But Macrumours readers told me that the new Macs suck and no one would want them.

I may resemble that remark, but in my case it is not that they suck, it is actually the opposite. They are really good computers, just they abandoned my use case (portable professional) which is 17 inch display with full speed processors and don't care about battery life. Since my 2010 MBP I would have bought 2 laptops by now if they were available. I did buy a new 2012 Mini, but again I don't see me ever buying a new mini unless they start offering a higher end version. The more recent versions do not have the performance.

Smaller and poorer performance are only acceptable options to people that only tweet, read MS documents, and send email. There are a lot of us that need something more.

 

[TallManNY]

Yes and No.
Issue as I see it. Wife needed a new laptop - her Vaio died an ugly death. So off to Best Buy / Fry's Electronics while referencing Amazon we went.
Ugh.
It was either cheap and junk or good and expensive. The middle of the road decent for a decent price pc was pretty much extinct. When you get into that range, even a Mac becomes an option.

When I think about what sort of sales volume the PC manufacturers are doing in the $1,200 laptop range, my concern for them is that they aren't selling enough individually and so they are going to struggle with economies of scale against Apple. And if you go with good and expensive for your PC and then it dies in two years, you are going to be upset as a consumer. I'm upset for my company and its purchase of Toshibas.

At suggestion of above, I just looked at Dell's website. The XPS looks great. But the top of line 15 inch with super sharp screen is $2,300. For 10% more I can get me a high end 15" Macbook Pro with similar specs. Dell needs to beat Apple's prices by more than 10% in my opinion.

 

[dthmtlgod]

I wonder if the PC decline includes custom rigs. I know myself i will never buy another manufactured PC.

 

[nt5672]

. . . .Windows 10 is as solid as OS X. Both have issues . Both compliment each other on a Mac.

Yep, I'v starting using Windows 10 on my Mac because I figure the next laptop upgrade will not be a Mac. Apple apparently does not care about professionals that need performance from a laptop and don't care about cost (within reason), small size, or long battery life.

 

[Lankyman]

When I think about what sort of sales volume the PC manufacturers are doing in the $1,200 laptop range, my concern for them is that they aren't selling enough individually and so they are going to struggle with economies of scale against Apple. And if you go with good and expensive for your PC and then it dies in two years, you are going to be upset as a consumer. I'm upset for my company and its purchase of Toshibas.

At suggestion of above, I just looked at Dell's website. The XPS looks great. But the top of line 15 inch with super sharp screen is $2,300. For 10% more I can get me a high end 15" Macbook Pro with similar specs. Dell needs to beat Apple's prices by more than 10% in my opinion.

Why should it die in two years any more than an Apple should die in two years. I still have a P4 that's eleven years old and a Dell Inspiron that's 10 years old. Both of these are twice as old as my iMac. You sound like a salesmen's dream to me.

 

[mlody]

But Macrumours readers told me that the new Macs suck and no one would want them.

My guess is that most of these sales are laptops which are great. The iMac's and mac mini lines, especially the low end models majorly suck. there is a quick solution to that - keep the same price points, but replace the lame 5400 or 7200 spindles with 256GB SSD's (continue to use high end flash pci-e storage on high end models) - problem solved.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I love my Macs. I have been using them for over 20 years, have have purchased over a dozen for my home.

But, lately, it seems like Macs are becoming Apple's "Red headed step child".

They do not get updates that often, and sometimes the previous model becomes more attractive in the short term. Like in the case of the Mac Mini.

Also, I look at the reducing of the SSD in the fusion drive and wonder why they would do stuff like that.

I love my Macs, and can never picture myself switching to Windows, at least not anytime soon, but I wonder how long Apple will be able to keep these Mac sales up.

Blame Intel mostly for this - the strides forward in the mid-market have been very minimal in the last 5 years or so. At the high end, the performance or server CPUs have been advancing somewhat. At the low-end, low-power CPUs have been advancing unbelievably. At the mid-end though, there hasn't been anything compelling. A Sandy Bridge i5 based Macbook Pro from 2011 will perform about the same as a Broadwell i5 based Macbook Pro from 2015, where the latter would probably have better battery life. Meh...

 

[DevNull0]

Definitely, the days of hobbyists is sadly coming to a close. I used to do this myself, but now I find more peace of mind in just buying a Mac and not dealing with finding motherboards, GPUs, ram, drives, cases, power supplies. That can be find once in a while, but after a period of time, it gets old..

I think this is more a matter of getting older. I used to love putting my own computer together, was always upgrading something, I never even bothered putting the side panels on my case.

Recently I put together a gaming machine for the first time in about 5 years. I found it annoying and tedious to deal with the fiddly bits, route cables nicely, etc. I expect to leave the machine alone for the next 5 years and i really have no interest in opening the box again. But I definitely felt like the change was in me and not the market. The availability of parts is better than ever and there's thriving communities on line. I waited in line on black friday for some of the parts, and it was a very long line of people mostly 10-15 years younger than me. I definitely think the way you feel is a sign of you getting older.

I also used to run a linux desktop exclusively. Now I prefer something that just works even if it's not perfect. It doesn't mean linux is becoming a thing of the past though. I used to do embedded programming in assembly with PICs. Now I use an Arduino. It's an age thing.

 

[rockinrony]

I love my Macs. I have been using them for over 20 years, have have purchased over a dozen for my home.

But, lately, it seems like Macs are becoming Apple's "Red headed step child".

They do not get updates that often, and sometimes the previous model becomes more attractive in the short term. Like in the case of the Mac Mini.

Also, I look at the reducing of the SSD in the fusion drive and wonder why they would do stuff like that.

I love my Macs, and can never picture myself switching to Windows, at least not anytime soon, but I wonder how long Apple will be able to keep these Mac sales up.

Most of Mac users are frustrated with this thing. That is what dirty business strategy of Tim Cook. Give minimum and slow upgrades as possible, serve half baked product and keep consumers always tempted and hungry, so they cant resist themselves to buy next version. Keep real updates on your rack to sell for next year. He knows, people will come anyway to buy their products. He is misusing the brand name, loyalty of Mac users and his power. They are just into making money, profits, big margins and market share war ! Poor Apple is in wrong hands

 

[melendezest]

These are all good points. But I strongly suspect that Price is the main driver. After that Windows program compatibility (on the consumer side gaming and on the commercial side enterprise software and integration). After that the other points, while valid, probably have little impact.

The Apple sells because it is "cool" is a tired and, I believe, largely wrong analysis.

I think that the Price component is more complex than just the actual price; people are looking for a good value, i.e. price + capability. Today's Windows machines are actually a good value.

Now I also believe that Apple does sell because it's cool. This has been true for years, but they're really capitalizing on it now. Their "cool" factor is sky-high today, and there isn't a trendy tv show or coffee bar that isn't rife with gold/white iPhones and Macbooks. Apple's push into fashion and the luxury market is the culmination of this trend. For example, you don't need a Mercedes Benz to get from point A to point B. But you do if you want to be perceived by others as X, Y or Z (successful, wealthy, cool, etc).

Again, this is not to speak to the quality of Apple's products; I still think their products are outstanding. Their customer service is second-to-none. And the "cool" factor adds to these positive attributes.

But the capability of the product vs price, i.e. value, has clearly gone out of whack recently.

Apple's attention to aesthetics drives sales. This in turn is supported by their (amazing) marketing, which always has positioned them as the "cool" company (Mac vs PC ads are the best example I can think of).

Thus, the competition's strides (both Android, Samsung, and Windows products to name a few) in quality appear to be largely ignored (particularly by the media), because Apple commands truly great mindshare.

However, charts like these show the truth: Apple is still niche (albeit happy about it and profitable as all hell).

What this all means is that Apple will suck our wallets dry while giving us "just enough", and will never get back to building the BEST product they can. This has become their mechanism for the comeback: make the (arguably) "best-looking" products, instead of the (arguably) "best overall" products they used to.

 

[Gudi]

Can’t believe you got a single upvote for that crap.

Exactly my thoughts on your post.

If they wanted to I’m sure they could make a device that switches pretty seamlessly between one type and the other and at little additional cost. That is what people want.

No it isn't and no they couldn't. There is only one company in the world that owns both a desktop and a mobile OS with sufficient third party developer support, but even Apple couldn't build a true hybrid device without putting both an ARM and an INTEL chip in it, and thus creating one device for the price of two devices. Hybrids can't be cheap and they aren't. Do you think Microsoft has a 40% profit margin on the Surface Pro? No they don't. The high price reflects how expensive it is to build a hybrid.

Unless you actually need quantity, why on earth would you want two devices if one can do the job just as well?

Because one can't do the job as well as two can. The iPad opened a market for tablets, only because it doesn't come with a trackpad, keyboard, CPU fan, USB ports and Flash. A tablet does the job of a tablet so well, because it doesn't even try to do the job of a PC.

If I can attach a keyboard to my iPad and have the OS change to a full desktop mode, why would I not want that.

Because that's impossible. To run in full desktop mode, you need a full PC. The iPad isn't a full PC, it's mobile technology derived from iPhone and Newton.

Let me put a twist on your post; People want the best camera. Period. Not hybrids, (Smartphones), or any of that other garbage that turns into another device with no optical zoom. They want the best experience on the best hardware. See how one device can do the job of two in this instance?

A camera isn't a device. A camera is a sensor to feed data into a device. And the quality of the sensor is severely limited by the thickness of the device. But the camera sensor and the ARM chip in the iPhone, they aren't hybrid as in two things doing the same job in different ways. A hybrid car has an combustion engine and an electric engine, both for propulsion. You wouldn't call it a hybrid car only because it has an engine and a radio in one device.