Apple on the other hand is Still selling that 2 month hardware, at the price it started at.
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This is the Apple tax.
And it's this, plus the forced 45% (estimated) profit margin that Apple insists must sell hardware at that tends to steer people towards PC's.
I agree with the first point and Apple does this because they can (doh)
But the second point is simply wrong. Apple would love it if they could have "forced" 45% profit margin with Macs. It's much lower and that's even including all the fancy expensive upgrades.
Apple also hasn't helped make things better by having very Niche products that don't actually serve the mass audiences.
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the Majority of 'desktops' that are sold are traditional towers. Something Apple does not have.
Not really important though. The majority of computers are laptops, and really cheap ones. We're talking about an average sales price of $400 - $550. That's the average price, including all the high end laptops, meaning there are many computers being sold even below $400. Apple is simply not going to touch that market.
This has been debunked here several times recently, at least where phone sales are concerned. Apple uses the same method to report phone sales as Samsung. I believe that KDarling has provided ample evidence. Apple does give numbers at their quarterly reports.
That's true to an extent that they both report sell-ins without sell-outs, but Samsung conflate matters by including all the carrier preorders and channel fill-ins and drum up those numbers. How Samsung really reports their numbers and their sell-out number has always been the point of contention as well as investors' worry in recent quarters. For all their short comings and secrecies, Apple is one of most transparent corporations around both in financial reporting as well as corporate responsibility reports, and deserve some kudos there I think.