I have read elsewhere that those were chosen because they are the hottest sellers in the Wintel world.
While possibly true, The field of possible sellers in WinTel world is wide. Even within the same company.
Dell currently has 6 (at least) different laptop product lines, that range in price from $500 to several thousand. And all come with multiple "tiered" products within each. With different CPU, RAM and hard drive options available on almost every item in their lineup
Lenovo is currently selling 16 different product offerings.
so taking the "best" offering from 16 other offerings doesn't really reflect reality. Especially since it's not comparing like to like products. Dell for example would need to sell 2.5 times the inspiron low end laptops to equal 1 rMBP in revenues. Which is silly since hey're not even in the same product categories.
These numbers are overall meaningless. If you want to see how the market really is working, you need to look at total volumes, which are released by many companies quarterly. And when you start looking at total volumes, (while we don't have the new rMBP numbers yet), Apple's entire computer lineup only puts them around the 5th/6th for actual units shipped, and (not including new laptops), that number has been slipping quarter after quarter.
thats why these numbers are absolutely meaningless as actual individual corporate revenue on a product lineup is absolutely meaningless in context of the industry. They are also almost contextually irrelevant to the company and Apple itself, since revenues do not equal profit, till costs are included. Apple might hvae brought in some great first week revenues with the rMBP, but until they actually do the financials, That still could be a losing amount.
this is absolutely nothing but Marketing and sales trying to pump up their chests. if you were to add up all the WinTel laptops, from all vendors, and all their laptop products, they would likely dwarf Apple's laptop revenues. And believe it or not, Companies like Dell, LEnovo, HP have all claimed profits on their devices too, so it's not like everyone in the WinTel world is just selling cheap crap at a loss to boast sales numbers.
Dell did one of the most impressive moves in the computer industry a few years back. They were in a similar place to where Apple is now (from a Stock/Wallstreet perspective) where Wallstreet investor demands for ever increasing profit margins, started to cripple Dell's ability to provide good quality products, at reasonable prices. Prices started going up. Quality went down as Dell started to become cheaper and cheaper on the back end in order to maintain and push profit margins. It almost killed them. Their stock tanked so hard that Dell bought back controlling interest in Dell, went back private and told wallstreet to pound sand.
since then, Dell has focused first on their quality first, and has absolutely seen them rebound in the most recent years. Once you start catering to your client, and not investors, money starts coming in because when a product meets peoples wants, desires and offers sufficient perceived values, People will buy your products. I feel like Apple is currently stuck in this rut where they are trying so hard to cater to investors that they are putting consumers 2nd. Mature markets such as PC's, and now even phones, cannot generally sustain a company that demands high profit margins, while the competition can offer far lower prices, and still maintain profitability.
the next 3-5 years will be the most interesting days at Apple HQ.
But nope, it wasn't because they were "The hottest sellers". the numbers were nitpicked.
For example, Before today's update, the charts only listed Dell's inspiron. Inspiron is NOT their big revenue generator. the XPS line is. And STILL even after the update, it's being spun and split. The XPS products are split and only reporting ONE of them (there's a 13 and 15" models).
meanwhile, the MacBook Pro revenues are all combined.
again, the TLDR: this article is absolutely 100% marketing Spin.
They've updated the original C|Net article with the XPS 13 and 15, again, Split into two categories, but when you combine them both, they are far closer to the newest MacBook Pro numbers. Yes, its over longer period of time, BUT that still doesn't account for the rest of Dell's lineups being far greater range in prices, plus, it still doesn't include Dell's Latitude or Precision laptops Once you add up All of Dell's Revenues from All their product categories in the laptop world, those numbers really don't show what Schill the Shill says they show.
They show that there was an extreme amount of pent up demand for a product thats share was slipping over the last year, and that initial, 5 days sales were good. Now, lets see how those numbers look over the next year. Will they stay stable? or will they do what the Apple watch did and drop 66% after the initial months (Initial month of Apple watch sales were estimated around 3.5m, but dropped to approximately 1million for each quarter afterwards)
