Apple Maintains Third Place in U.S. PC Sales for 4Q 2012

[Stella]

Even back then, Apple had something like 25% of consumer sales, but a vanishingly small share of enterprise sales. That breakdown is so *rarely* discussed, though.

Apple never seemed to understand the corporate world, they sucked at it, despite having a few stabs at it - they never learnt.

I wouldn't mind Apple's market share staying small... It'd mean less Mac-compatible viruses I hope.

I suspect you really meant malware, these days . OSX has plenty of security holes, they aren't exploited and remain hidden. It would be a different story if OSX had the user base of windows.

 

[SilentLoner]

That's actually another point. I haven't seen one *recently*, but a few years ago (2008 or 2009, IIRC), there was an article about US laptop market share where the differences between enterprise and consumer sales were discussed. Even back then, Apple had something like 25% of consumer sales, but a vanishingly small share of enterprise sales. That breakdown is so *rarely* discussed, though.

I work in a school and we had custom builds but now we are moving towards refitting with Dell's all the high school students and the elementary classes have ipads.

I wish we had a Mac suite though.

 

[KnightWRX]

Actually, you answered why they insist on buying the 2" thick bricks, earlier in this same post. Purely pricing. That class of machine is incredibly cheap to produce. I've been thrilled to work for companies that don't have to operate under those public submission rules. I may still have to use a Dell or HP box at work, but I at least get to use one that is reasonably well built (not so far down in the pricing chain that all the quality has been squeezed out).

Looking at our price list, my 12" is cheaper than the 15", which are expensive as heck (being either Lattitude or Elitebook series, they are more expensive than consumer units). There is no reason they insist on bulk buying the 15", except for people who want "more screen" and don't use an external monitor or dock (which we all get...). It's really incomprehensible if you ask me.

 

[Mike Valmike]

If Apple had shipped the 2012 iMac in a timely fashion, they probably could have taken 2nd. I lay that failure, then and ongoing now, squarely at the feet of Tim Cook. If there were going to be such yield problems and production constraints, and DigiTimes knew about them in June, then the correct move would have been to do a spec bump with Ivy in July/August, and save the redesign for 2013.

 

[tbrinkma]

No sorry, trying to dismiss market share numbers with "profit" is the argument of someone looking to justify Apple's position in some way. It's not really the topic and no one rational would care enough that Apple is #3 to try and attack HP and Dell's #1 spot.

No one but shareholders care about profits. Profits are essentially the dollars a company managed to charge extra for to buyers and stuff their money with. If you ask me, the less profits the better I'm off.

And yet, in a later post, you complain about the uber-low-cost systems you have to use at work where they are chosen purely by pricing.

When companies have gotten a product's price so low that they no longer make a sustainable profit, they have long since squeezed all the quality out of that product.

Dell and HP sell a *lot* more units than Apple, but they've both been in danger of going bankrupt more recently than Apple, simply because their 'typical' unit does virtually nothing for their bottom line.

 

[doomfront]

Lenovo is getting noticed. I wonder how many people chose a Lenovo lap top over Apple lap tops?

Didn't chose it over a MBP because I have one, but I did just get a Y580 to do some light gaming on the go. It's really nice

 

[gnasher729]

Lenovo is getting noticed. I wonder how many people chose a Lenovo lap top over Apple lap tops?

None. They chose Lenovo over Dell.

What we see here: HP is recovering from its self caused disaster last year when they speculated about leaving the PC market altogether. Acer's growth was caused by netbooks, and that growth has now disappeared. Some sales moving around, for example Dell to Lenovo. Apple doing very well compared to the PC market.

 

[longofest]

Reconsider Licensing Mac OS? Crazy, but it might just work.

Some are gonna think this is nuts, but I actually think that Apple should consider licensing Mac OS again. The times have changed, and the Macintosh is no longer Apple's primary revenue/profit maker - the iOS ecosystem is.

If you look at the Mac as a companion to an iOS ecosystem, then there is little harm done in experimenting with the license of MacOS again. I think Apple's hardware sales will take only a minor hit, as many buy Macs for their industrial design now adays, and Apple could make some nice side cash in licensing fees, espeically if the license is more than the $25 that it charges via Mac App store.

Fleshed out more here.

 

[tbrinkma]

Looking at our price list, my 12" is cheaper than the 15", which are expensive as heck (being either Lattitude or Elitebook series, they are more expensive than consumer units). There is no reason they insist on bulk buying the 15", except for people who want "more screen" and don't use an external monitor or dock (which we all get...). It's really incomprehensible if you ask me.

The reason they insist on bulk buying the 15" units has to do with volume discounts, and being able to easily swap units when something fails. The more variety you have, the more 'hot spares' the IT department needs to keep on hand in case of a failure. It's not so hard to understand when looking at it from a logistical perspective, rather than a user perspective.

No argument about how annoying it can be to have one system when you might be better served by another, though. The 'more screen' argument doesn't even fit with most Windows laptops though, unless they're actually spending the extra to get the reasonable resolutions, instead of the bottom of the barrel you get some places. (It boggles my mind that there's still 15" laptops with sub-720p resolutions out there, though *thankfully* they're significantly less common now than they were for a while.)

 

[gnasher729]

The fact is that both Dell and HP outsell Apple (in both units and revenue), but they're getting *murdered* by the unbelievably low margins on the typical systems they sell.

I wouldn't even bet that Dell is ahead of Apple in revenue (in computer sales). HP quite possibly, but not Dell.

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Gotta stick to the U.S. numbers because they fall off when you consider worldwide numbers, which really show how successful Lenovo and ASUS have been.

They also show how badly Dell is doing and what a disaster the last year has been for Acer. And these numbers show nothing at all about what Apple is doing world wide.

I didn't realize HP was doing so well... I'm in a room full of laptops right now and glancing around me I can make out...

HP is growing because the year before was just awful, and totally self-inflicted because plenty of people would have bought HP if Apotheker just had kept his mouth shut.

Another "half the story" article. What are the PC profits made by each company?

One third of the story. There is unit sales, there is revenue, and then there is profit. Average sales prices for iPads is higher than PCs. Average sales price for Macs is twice that.

 

[JHankwitz]

Another "half the story" article. What are the PC profits made by each company?

 

[tbrinkma]

Apple never seemed to understand the corporate world, they sucked at it, despite having a few stabs at it - they never learnt.

I think a lot of it is the lack of *any* public-facing information about future product plans. Update cycles can be *estimated* based on past cycles, but there's plenty of examples where those estimates are off significantly in both directions over the years. For Windows PC vendors, you can usually predict new product releases based on Intel's CPU releases. The Intel move has helped make Apple's release cycles a bit more predictable, but they have different ideas about what tradeoffs are the right ones to make than most of the industry, which competes on pricing of spec-lists.

 

[bushido]

If you're in a university the chances are most of the computers around you will be macs.

Image

(Funny side-note: We had a linux obsessed lecturer who spent 2 hours shouting at everyone in the room for being on a Mac or Windows machine, and he stood there with his laptop giving a presentation. Literally as he said "Those crappy closed source operating systems are so unreliable" his laptop locked up. Needless to say the lecture ended at that point. )

its the opposite at my university. all those tec nerds HATE apple for some reason. its quite funny. when im in economics class i see lots of macbooks and iphones. once i go to databases class all i see is samsung smartphones and windows laptops. some actually give me the evil eye when i unpack my macbook. redic

 

[everything-i]

Looking around me now I see.... hum... about 50 HP laptops, including my own EliteBook 12" laptop. No Macs, no Dell, no Lenovo, no Acers.

Of course, I'm at work, and we switched back to HP as a provider from Dell 2 years ago.

Got to agree with this, but considering Apple is no where in the corporate space these figures are pretty impressive as 99% of Apple's sales must be to home uses and small businesses. Every office I have worked in over the last few years has either HP, Dell, Lenovo or a mixture of these. You may see the odd Mac for special use but they are very rare.

 

[Stella]

I think a lot of it is the lack of *any* public-facing information about future product plans. Update cycles can be *estimated* based on past cycles, but there's plenty of examples where those estimates are off significantly in both directions over the years. For Windows PC vendors, you can usually predict new product releases based on Intel's CPU releases. The Intel move has helped make Apple's release cycles a bit more predictable, but they have different ideas about what tradeoffs are the right ones to make than most of the industry, which competes on pricing of spec-lists.

Yes - Apple's secrecy, also secondly... hardware / software support.

There's also been, on macrumours, how about Apple's support sucks - for example, getting a PC repaired takes far longer than say, a Dell / HP with on-site support.

There's also the back office functionality that microsoft provide, and apple don't do so well - software to manage an office full of PCs.

 

[samcraig]

Another "half the story" article. What are the PC profits made by each company?

It's not half the story. It's a full story. It's just not the full story you want to read about. I don't disagree profits are an interesting thing to read about - but many articles appear all over the news about all industries that just speak to marketshare.

 

[tevion5]

Third place is pretty good considering they don't sell PC's!

 

[frayne182]

It's not half the story. It's a full story. It's just not the full story you want to read about. I don't disagree profits are an interesting thing to read about - but many articles appear all over the news about all industries that just speak to marketshare.

Agreed.

 

[alent1234]

Some are gonna think this is nuts, but I actually think that Apple should consider licensing Mac OS again. The times have changed, and the Macintosh is no longer Apple's primary revenue/profit maker - the iOS ecosystem is.

If you look at the Mac as a companion to an iOS ecosystem, then there is little harm done in experimenting with the license of MacOS again. I think Apple's hardware sales will take only a minor hit, as many buy Macs for their industrial design now adays, and Apple could make some nice side cash in licensing fees, espeically if the license is more than the $25 that it charges via Mac App store.

Fleshed out more here.

they are not going to license OS X

my prediction is a cheap ARM based computer. like a laptop in the $500 range

when you think about it most software people use will easily run on a low end CPU so its not like you need an iCore. most people don't care about garage band.

cheap $500 apple laptop with a large hard drive will sell like crazy when its time to replace the existing computer

 

[dBeats]

Wondering what this looks like if you consider a "tablet" a PC.

 

[Renzatic]

They also show how badly Dell is doing and what a disaster the last year has been for Acer. And these numbers show nothing at all about what Apple is doing world wide.

Probably not as well as you'd think. As far as the PC market is concerned, Apple has always had a much stronger following in the US than it is elsewhere. They have their following, but it's pretty small compared to what it is here in the states.

 

[Unspeaked]

I disagree. I think it's pretty obvious the tone of the post. Not to mention - what does profit margin have to do with the topic. Oh I know it's related. But the manner in which the OP commented - it wasn't a discussion point. It was what everyone knows it was. A knock on HP and Dell for not being Apple.

Best post I've read in a while.

It's funny how many threads on here are full of posters indirectly bragging about Apple ripping them off!

 

[Dr McKay]

I didn't realize HP was doing so well... I'm in a room full of laptops right now and glancing around me I can make out...

4 MacBook Airs, 1 MacBook Pro, 1 Acer, 1 Dell, 1 HP, and 1 IBM.

What do the numbers look like when you just look at laptops?

Edit: I'm in a university engineering classroom... my understanding was many engineering students use Windows...

Here at work we have roughly 4,000 Dells.

 

[myrtlebee]

Notebooks from Apple have always been my favorite Apple products. Almost always reliable and robust. And, of course, always beautiful to look at. It pays to pay a premium for an MacBook.

 

[The Bulge]

some are gonna think this is nuts, but i actually think that apple should consider licensing mac os again. The times have changed, and the macintosh is no longer apple's primary revenue/profit maker - the ios ecosystem is.

If you look at the mac as a companion to an ios ecosystem, then there is little harm done in experimenting with the license of macos again. I think apple's hardware sales will take only a minor hit, as many buy macs for their industrial design now adays, and apple could make some nice side cash in licensing fees, espeically if the license is more than the $25 that it charges via mac app store.

fleshed out more here.

it is nuts.

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Here at work we have roughly 4,000 Dells.

Where should i send the flowers?