Apple Surpassed 10% Share of Notebook Market in 2015 Amid Industry Decline

[Traverse]

It's because of the Retina MacBook!

I still want one, but I'm holding out for Skylake and an updated Display!
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Not bad - now about that new MacBook Pro.....

It will have 13 hour batter life once they swap out that energy behemoth i7 for a Core M!

 

[Mascots]

MacBooks are unquestionably the best all round laptop money can buy, but Apple should be able to do so much more. Bringing out a redesign seems to be such a big feat for Apple, while HP, Dell and Lenovo release improved designs ever (second?) year. Considering their resources, Apple should have been first to implement Skylake, new designs, Infinity-displays, 18-hour battery life, 4K, et.c. Touch-ID should have been implemented in the laptops a long, long time ago.

I don't need redesigns, but I'd like to see them get more responsive to Intel's cycle delays and bumps, rather than pushing it off and dealing with it until the next their next refresh (like they did with 15" MBPs with Haswell, & w/o Broadwell). Their hands were essentially tied, but that move raised my brow since that's where the meat of the Mac hardware lies and not so much in feature squeeze. At the same time, I think it'd be excusable if there was a sizable update coming down the line (feature, CPU, and software in June).

As far as things like Skylake, if you look into Intel's roadmap, you can see their bumps are affecting Apple's products delivery to the market. At the same time, it's fair to take into consideration their tight partnership and wonder where Apple has been dallying over the last ~10 month cycle (especially given Intel+Apple's timing with the 12" MB). The delay in Skylake should have been minimal for Apple given the partial skip around Broadwell and even though Intel released the chipsets applicable for MBP pretty quietly and pretty outside the expected delivery window.

I agree, they have some of the best notebooks ever but part of that comes from their consistent iteration - no matter when you buy it should have the most up-to-date components available and that's a trend Apple seems to have been stepping off as of lately. Maybe a larger refresh or maybe caught up in supply chain/timeline issues, only time will tell.

 

[iTom17]

This isn't surprising. They make among the best laptops available.

This.

I recently switched from a crappy, plastic Windows notebook to the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. And it is such an amazing machine. Really can't believe why I haven't done this earlier (apart from not having enough money of course). Build quality is incredible, the Retina Display is gorgeous, battery life is great and OS X works great when you've got other iOS devices. Yes, it's an expensive notebook, but you get what you pay for.

I can definitely see Apple having a comfortable 2016 as well in terms of notebook sales, and Mac sales in general.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Good to see Apple gain market share here.

There's still no (real) replacement for a Mac portable out there that is not a Mac portable.

That said, the uptick puts Apple in the position of not really updating/redesigning anything; these things sell themselves, so it'll probably be same-old same-old.

Here's to hoping for a 17" MBP (unlikely), thinner bezels and better screens throughout (especially on the Air), bigger storage options, USB-C/TB3 ports throughout their line (more than one, please), and no loss of current features (also unlikely).

Yes, 17" or bigger (One can dream would probably sell like hot cakes.

My 2008 17" MBP is the all time best of all Apple's I ever had since 1984.
I am sure later than 2008 ones also.
All ports FW 400, FW 800, DVI, 3 USBs and whatever port isn't there I can hook up with an adapter dongle.
Upgraded to max memory. Put in 500GB HD and 500GB SSD (Took out Superdrive (Who needs disk players)
Was like a new life machine.

Also have a 2014 Retina 15" MBP, nice and fast (beautiful form factor and feel when carrying) , but the 17" is still my workhorse.

Waiting for OWC to finally release it's 1 GB SSD for 2014 models.
In the meantime OWC dock for it has EVERYTHING.

Probably the way Apple goes in the future, 1 connector, 1 charging port and you need a dock for all the other hookups.

Would still be nice if they let us tinker with memory chips and SSDs. Makes a machine last a few extra years.

 

[navaira]

Umm... Apple do not sell three models of laptops. They sell at least six. rMB 12", MBA 11", 13", MBP 13", rMBP 13" and 15". And that's before we go into processor, memory, etc. BTO models.

I understand that it's fun to say "hahahahaha Dell sells 100000 models and Apple three and they win yay" but please don't make things look better than they are – they are good enough already.

 

[MacLawyer]

All hail the hipster hotspot latte contingent!

I see a lot of Dells and Lenovos at my local Starbucks. Are they hipsters, too?

 

[69Mustang]

Notebooks: I've basically decided on a Surface Pro for my next notebook. My MBA is basically a glorified Windows/Google machine anyway. PC vendors have improved their design and build quality to the point where there's no value add for me in an Apple notebook.
The only product left with a chance at my money is a new Mac mini. I'm hoping against hope it won't be an update similar to the last one. Ugggh.

 

[Popeye206]

I'm really hoping for new MacBooks at the March event. Crossing my fingers.

 

[MacHiavelli]

ARM is where the money is.

The end is nigh for Intel in Apple laptops.

 

[Kaibelf]

There's still a HUGE business software gap on the Mac side.

At my company, we don't buy cheap PC hardware (HP, ASUS, Acer), we buy the best and most reliable hardware on the market.
Right now that is the Lenovo ThinkPad T series line of laptops.
MacBooks have nice hardware, but limitations in business software for OS X still relegate them to niche departments.
Mainly marketing and media.

What software are you talking about? Office? Just about all major productivity software that's become an industry standard has gotten on board at this point, or have some kind of cloud-based offering which is their roadmap, so I don't see Apple limited to marketing an media for the past few years.

And this is coming from someone using a Mac in a services firm which is mainly focused on Cisco UCS. It's very common to see people who are nowhere near media/marketing using Mac here now.

 

[iLunar]

All hail the hipster hotspot latte contingent!

They're spending the most amount of money in consumer trends. Companies are following their dollars.

 

[bondsbw]

Using these figures, Apple shipments went up by a little less than 0.1M units in 2 years. Compare with others that went up:


Lenovo: up 1.1M units
Others: up 0.8M units
Dell: up 0.7M units

And here's who went down:

Toshiba: down 9.0M units
acer: down 3.2M units
HP: down 2.3M units
ASUS: down 2.3M units
Sony: down 1.1M units (discontinued)
Samsung: down 0.9M units

Poor Toshiba.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Apple's share of unit sales is nice, but since the average unit price of Macs is higher, Apple's share of revenue and profit is much higher than shows here. As always, Apple skims the cream, and that's what gives the other PC-makers headaches.

It's not likely another 17" MBP (or MB, for that matter) would sell like hotcakes. If they had, Apple would still be making them. Sure, there's some pent-up demand, but don't confuse your personal needs and desires for a universal need/desire. If they return they will, again, be the most costly products in an already-costly product line.

Similar can be said for things like hardware refreshes - don't confuse your priorities with those of the market as a whole. Most PC buyers don't pay attention to these things. For every person willing to wait for the latest and greatest CPU are, perhaps, three or four (or maybe 10) who buy whatever is available at the time they need a new computer. They run the machine into the ground, and when it doesn't work any more, they're not in a position to wait any longer. Or college starts in two weeks, or the budgeted funds have to be spent before the fiscal year ends....

 

[shareef777]

Damn it! Saw the pics of the laptops on the front page and thought there was a release. Going to go back crying in my corner!

 

[LordVic]

Cause numbers are meaningless out of context, here's some additional numbers (I LOVE NUMBERS!, ONE AH AH AH, TWO AH AH AH, THR... ok, watched too much sesame street with the nieces). These are not ranked by anything just taking the Market share % numbers and calculating out the volume each company shipped based on totals at the bottom.

there are some minor rounding errors

All numbers are in Millions.

WTF Toshiba? Lol

 

[melendezest]

Yes, 17" or bigger (One can dream would probably sell like hot cakes.

My 2008 17" MBP is the all time best of all Apple's I ever had since 1984.
I am sure later than 2008 ones also.
All ports FW 400, FW 800, DVI, 3 USBs and whatever port isn't there I can hook up with an adapter dongle.
Upgraded to max memory. Put in 500GB HD and 500GB SSD (Took out Superdrive (Who needs disk players)
Was like a new life machine.

Also have a 2014 Retina 15" MBP, nice and fast (beautiful form factor and feel when carrying) , but the 17" is still my workhorse.

Waiting for OWC to finally release it's 1 GB SSD for 2014 models.
In the meantime OWC dock for it has EVERYTHING.

Probably the way Apple goes in the future, 1 connector, 1 charging port and you need a dock for all the other hookups.

Would still be nice if they let us tinker with memory chips and SSDs. Makes a machine last a few extra years.

Agreed, although I prefer the last 17" (2011). They will pry that machine from my cold, dead fingers. That one has TB, USB2 (just before USB 3 ), Gbit Ethernet, FW800, the inmensely underrated Expresscard slot (makes it expandable) and an Optical Drive I use as a second HD/SSD bay. Whew! It's 6.6lbs and still sexy as hell. The weaklings out there complaining about 3lbs need not apply.

I have absolutely ZERO retina machine envy.

That said, I'm hoping for a new 17" with TB3 and over 2TB of storage. That is the game changer I've been waiting for (no more bottlenecks), and until that happens I'll be holding on to "old-but-trusty".

 

[Mascots]

The only product left with a chance at my money is a new Mac mini. I'm hoping against hope it won't be an update similar to the last one. Ugggh.

With the track record, I'm hoping for any update ever. I'm not holding my breath though. Talk about the red headed stepchild.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Has anyone posted, who cares about market share, Apple makes the most profit?

 

[DevNull0]

This.

I recently switched from a crappy, plastic Windows notebook to the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. And it is such an amazing machine. Really can't believe why I haven't done this earlier (apart from not having enough money of course). Build quality is incredible, the Retina Display is gorgeous, battery life is great and OS X works great when you've got other iOS devices. Yes, it's an expensive notebook, but you get what you pay for.

So an Apple laptop has a better build quality and is a vastly superior machine to a crappy plastic windows notebook that was probably less than 20% the price. That's quite an amazing feat on Apple's part.

Now how does Apple stack up against a mid-to high end windows laptop at 50-80% of the cost? Apple performance is a joke. For the cost of a 15" MBP, I can get a windows machine with a full power GTX 980 (not the M model). Currently, apple is selling budget junk in a nice case at a beyond premium price.

I am a long time Apple laptop user and in the past I've always had a fairly new machine. Now my 2011 MBP is going to be my last mac. I'm keeping it going as long as possible but I can't bring myself to buy a machine a limited and crippled as the current mac offerings.

 

[Dinø]

Surprising, considering the new trackpad and keyboard found on some of the newer models.

 

[iTom17]

So an Apple laptop has a better build quality and is a vastly superior machine to a crappy plastic windows notebook that was probably less than 20% the price. That's quite an amazing feat on Apple's part.

Now how does Apple stack up against a mid-to high end windows laptop at 50-80% of the cost? Apple performance is a joke. For the cost of a 15" MBP, I can get a windows machine with a full power GTX 980 (not the M model). Currently, apple is selling budget junk in a nice case at a beyond premium price.

I am a long time Apple laptop user and in the past I've always had a fairly new machine. Now my 2011 MBP is going to be my last mac. I'm keeping it going as long as possible but I can't bring myself to buy a machine a limited and crippled as the current mac offerings.

Well, it actually did cost me €900 (the Mac was €1580). So it wasn't a cheap notebook at all. I know it's still a difference of almost €700, but for a laptop with that price tag I was expecting better. Heck, the battery life was even worse. May be due to the processor, which was a quad-core Ivy Bridge, but still... It had less than 3 hours of battery life at LOW usage. You can't call that a notebook, especially these days.

ARM is where the money is.

The end is nigh for Intel in Apple laptops.

I look really forward to Apple introducing a Mac with its own designed processor. iPad Pro and iPhone 6s show what they can do with their knowledge. Just another generation, and it might be enough to power a MacBook Air. A10X or A11X maybe?

 

[Michael Goff]

Unless Apple announces $599 laptops...

With how much Intel chops cost?

 

[melendezest]

I'm not an Apple fan and ditched iPhone, Apple TV and my Airport many years ago. But no matter how hard I look, nothing beats the Mac.

I tried a Chromebook which was one of the oddest experiences I've had.

And I've looked long and hard at Windows laptops for years but, apart from having to switch to Windows, there doesn't seem to be a Windows PC that is as well built, attractive and such good value for money. To get a Macbook and some 'essential' software (word processing, video editing, spreadsheet work) works out cheaper and better than an equivalent PC.

Same here. I ditched every other Apple product except for my MBPs (2012 & 2011) and my 2011 iMac (and even that is on the chopping block). If Apple were to put TB3 / USB-C on the mini and allow for third-party external graphics, my iMac would be gone, quick.

That said, the combination of a custom PC and a tablet would also pretty much accomplish anything I need to do, but I just don't want to build anything, and OS X is still the most stable and trouble-free(ish) OS out there.

And if it's portables we're dealing with exclusively, then yes, it's still a Mac or nothing for me. But the competition is getting close. Real close.

 

[R3k]

Imagine if apple actually focused on improving its macbook line-up, the way it does with the iPhone. Apple would be the top computer vendor.

I doubt that, price will always be the deciding factor.

 

[You are the One]

Very good.

Windows-based notebooks is a good alternative for the ad-ware type of people who also don't mind to get spied on and think it's a good deal to volunteer private information to save a few bucks and have all the time in the world to sit around waiting for patches to install.

I think it's reasonable to see an increased marketshare for Apple laptops in the professional industry as people start to realize that the TCO of Mac's is quite competitive compared with the spyware based alternative.

Called the Lenovo-support yesterday to help a person with some issues with their laptop. The experience was like calling the Adams-family residence for tech-support. Hilarious. Compare that to Apple's support and have a good laugh.