Apple's U.S. Market Share Approaches 10%

[monica23]

In his presentation today Apple's Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook talked about the Mac momentum. He hit a few key points as to why Apple thinks they are gaining market share and winning over new customers.

There's a nice compliation of the key parts of his presentation here

Here's what he talked about:

- Better Computers
- Better software
- Compatibility
- Vista
- Marketing
- Retail Stores
- Mac Retail Metrics
- Macs in Education
- Total Mac Units

 

[twoodcc]

alright apple! now let's keep it going!

 

[Zuplar]

that's good news for Steve Jobs i'm sure. i would like to see Apple continue to be successful and maybe close in on 12 to 14% of U.S. pc sales. MacBooks have become a lot more popular at my college which is good for business, but makes them less rare. i always get compliments on it though even though it is a year old now.

 

[inkswamp]

Holy @#$%&*!

I seriously never thought Macs would reach 10% marketshare, ever, and I was just fine with that. I'm not one of those Mac users who needs to see the planet converted before I die.

So this is amazing for me to see, and for many reasons too. I thought it would never get anywhere near 10%. It just seemed that Apple was always on the wrong side in a market where customers are usually looking for the cheapest thing they can find. It's remarkable especially given that Apple has only dipped its toe in the low-end market.

 

[donga]

increasing market share is great, although it seems like each time it goes up, apple becomes less and less the "little guy" and more like the big bad monopolist m$

 

[inkswamp]

Do we want Apple to get a bigger market share?
I want Apple to exceed But I'm afraid if they do gain a bigger market share then we will become more of a target for malware and viruses.
I like the absence of virus protection on my mac. I can go any were on the web. Download anything and everything. With out a care in the world.

Don't worry about it. While it's always wise to err on the side of security, the whole "greater market share means more viruses" argument comes from overly defensive Windows users who are not comfortable with Macs gaining ground and has been thoroughly debunked at this point. There is so much evidence against it that I sat down and compiled it all into an article in my blog mainly so I could have a convenient link to throw out when this comes up.

OS X isn't going to stay virus-free forever, but there's no real reason to think that the arrival of viruses on the Mac is tied to increasing market share.

 

[sukanas]

i rated this negative because these are the people that convince apple to go glossy

 

[SirOmega]

increasing market share is great, although it seems like each time it goes up, apple becomes less and less the "little guy" and more like the big bad monopolist m$

Its been said, that if Apple and MS switched places, we'd hate Apple a hell of a lot more than we hate MS now.

 

[billystlyes]

I seriously never thought Macs would reach 10% marketshare, ever, and I was just fine with that. .

They don't have 10% market share. It’s 10% of shipments in 3Q. With the all the expensive glossy crap they released today, I guarantee that rate goes down. Plus, the overall PC rate is growing faster rate. Not much good news today, sorry.

 

[bommai]

Someone tell me what to do!
I just got a white macbook 2.4 ghz last week
I can return it for $50 and get the 2.0 ghz base model.
Is it worth it?
Will it be slower?
How do the bus speeds compare and how is 2.0 faster than 2.4 given the faster bus. I don't get it.

If you want firewire, stay with what you have. Otherwise return it and get the new one. It has a better graphics card and better front side bus, etc. Also better track pad.

 

[shawnce]

They don't have 10% market share. It’s 10% of shipments in 3Q.

Market share is usually measured quarter by quarter and it is based on unit shipments (not installed base). They are approaching a 10% market share on average (in terms of shipments / aka unit volume).

With the all the expensive glossy crap they released today, I guarantee that rate goes down.

Apple has been growing / maintaining market share with laptops and desktops that have been, until today, rather long in the tooth and in a weak economy. It is much more likely that the new systems will improve their unit volumes even in the face of economic worries.

Plus, the overall PC rate is growing faster rate. Not much good news today, sorry.

"overall PC rate" what? US? world wide? retail? all channels? etc. please be clear... Apple has been growing at a faster rate, in almost all market segments, for several quarters compared to many of their competitors and especially compared to a composite of all competitors.

 

[freebooter]

Despite continued strong performance in the U.S. market, Apple has yet to crack the top five vendors for worldwide shipments. Toshiba continues to hold the fifth spot with a 4.6% market share in a worldwide PC market that experienced 15% growth in shipments year-over-year.

Article Link

The new MacBooks have a huge markup on them in South Korea, even after factoring in the exchange rate and VAT. The $999 MB costs the equivalent of $1310 in Korea, for example. There wasn't this kind of mark up before. Maybe Apple doesn't think they can crack this market.

 

[cameronjpu]

OS X isn't going to stay virus-free forever, but there's no real reason to think that the arrival of viruses on the Mac is tied to increasing market share.

What a load of BS that is.

 

[amac4me]

Market share is usually measured quarter by quarter and it is based on unit shipments (not revenue or installed base). They are approaching a 10% market share on average.

This is incorrect. Market share can be measured on a revenue basis and can be done over any period, quarters, years, and so on.

The best way to understand market share (for the purposes of revenue) is as follows:
it's a measure of firm's revenue divided by the total market revenue

Gartner is measuring Apple's Mac unit shipments versus the total shipments of all firms in the market.

 

[redmeister]

impressive stuff for sure... growth growth growth

 

[shawnce]

This is incorrect. Market share can be measured on a revenue basis and can be done over any period, quarters, years, and so on.

True. I meant my "usually" to cover both quarter by quarter and revenue. I say usually since that is normally what you get folks reporting on in the media and in the scope of this thread that is exactly what is being reported on.

Apple has been doing well on market share revenue wise (in several segments) for a while now and trending well in unit volume (shipments) market share.

 

[gcmexico]

Apple just keeps rolling along..great news

 

[mugwump]

This numbers are very low and inaccurate. A year ago I thought the number of mac shipped was actually 2.1 million. This year should be, what 2.4 million in the quarter? These are absolute numbers, not relative percentages. If the other company numbers are accurate and the Apple ones are very low, then isn't actual market share higher?

 

[IJ Reilly]

Here are the numbers for last quarter:

 

[inkswamp]

What a load of BS that is.

As I noted in my blog post, yours is generally the attitude I see on the market share argument--and always with no evidence to support it.

If you have some real evidence to support your opinion, I'd love to see it. So far, I have never seen anyone make the market share argument with actual evidence to support it. It's all anecdotal and faulty observations based on the post-hoc fallacy of "Well, Windows has a large market share and a lot of viruses so therefore the two must be connected."

Still, I'm open to reasonable rebuttals to what I wrote. Got any?

 

[takao]

apple still not having cracked world top5 suppliers... god fix the international pricing already

 

[Marx55]

WINDOWS IS ONLY MAINTAINED BY IGNORANCE AND INERTIA. The day the Mac gets 25% market share, Windows and Microsoft will be history in three years!

 

[gnasher729]

With pricing like this, I hope Apple see a more dramatic fall this Q4.

I think you will be disappointed. The new MacBooks will be sold by the shedload for the Christmas season.

 

[Macmel]

WINDOWS IS ONLY MAINTAINED BY IGNORANCE AND INERTIA. The day the Mac gets 25% market share, Windows and Microsoft will be history in three years!

The day Mac gets 25% market share, windows and Microsoft will still have 75% of the market. And that's not counting people that actually buy and install windows on their Macs as a second OS.
The truth is most people cannot afford a $1300 computer (let alone $2000). Full stop.
For half that money you get a perfect PC for gaming, watching videos, perfectly compatible with tones of different codecs and video and audio players, browsing the internet, etc. And that's what the average consumer does and that's why Apple won't ever dominate this market.
Ask around and you will see that most people don't know what's a LED screen and why it is better than TFT, or the difference between DDR2 and DDR3, etc. And even if you know that, you still can get a, for instance, A Mac Pro-like (spec-wise) for half the price. Not so good looking? agreed. A similar performer? also agreed.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I will reiterate the prediction I made three months ago that by July 2009, the Mac will hold a 12.5% market share in the US. The economy is the big variable of course, but there's no real reason to believe that the slowdown will hit Apple any harder than the rest of the industry, so I would say they are still on target to grow market share by that much.

For those that think that this is (1) too much or (2) too little, consider that the Mac market share was in this neighborhood during the early 1990s. We're simply getting back to where the Mac's share of the market was nearly 20 years ago -- and it's all good!