A drop of 60,000 units could mean anything - people opting to go for a Mac Pro but those Mac Pro sales not being counted until it has actually shipped? Btw, where is the numbers globally? do Gartner actually realise there is a whole world beyond the boarders of the United States or is Gartner yet another out of touch US centric business?
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U.S. Mac Sales Fall in Winter Quarter, Global PC Market Sees Continued Sales Falloff
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The Mac has outperformed the market globally all but one quarter over the last 6 or 7 years. We won't know Apple's numbers until their quarterly report is released in a couple weeks. Gartner only provides estimates for the top 5 PC vendors globally.
Perhaps you could read the linked release. Gartner does release global numbers.
incorrect first sentence
Very misleading first sentence. A fall of 3.8% in market share would be very significant. The decline in market share is much smaller -- a decline to a spot .7% below where it was one year ago same quarter. Given the way market share fluctuates quarter to quarter year to year, that's interesting but not all that significant.
The 3.8% decline was in units shipped/sold/whatever -- a very different beast.
Very misleading first sentence. A fall of 3.8% in market share would be very significant. The decline in market share is much smaller -- a decline to a spot .7% below where it was one year ago same quarter. Given the way market share fluctuates quarter to quarter year to year, that's interesting but not all that significant.
The 3.8% decline was in units shipped/sold/whatever -- a very different beast.
Apparently you don't understand global economics.
What is spend in a country like China, India, Germany, ect. is peanuts compared to the US market.
Hell, the entire EU barley beats out the US in GDP while having a population roughly 40% higher.
Gartner only report the sales numbers for the top 5 companies and Apple have never got that high worldwide.
There's only so much volume you would get out of that line. Once pent up demand is met, it's not likely to be anywhere near as significant as the imac or macbook pro. It can however still be successful without leading in volume.
The price of the 15" models has killed it for me. The cMBP was £1499 the rMBP starts at £1699 with just a 256gb ssd and no dedicated gpu.
I think that the desire to add relatively new and expensive hardware such as the high res displays and solid state storage without other options has made this generation prohibitively expensive for some potential customers.
Ill wait until a 15" MBP has a dedicated GPU and 512GB or more storage under the £2k mark.
I think that the desire to add relatively new and expensive hardware such as the high res displays and solid state storage without other options has made this generation prohibitively expensive for some potential customers.
Ill wait until a 15" MBP has a dedicated GPU and 512GB or more storage under the £2k mark.
I doubt that Apple will ever go back to a dedicated GPU solution with their stock configuration rMBP. It's probably due to space and cooling issues.
Very much agree. My 4 year old MacBook Pro is going great and I've no intention of upgrading any time soon. I did just buy a new iMac for home, but it was replacing a 10 year old G5! Who knows how long that iMac will last!!
It's one reason I'm surprised Apple hasn't pushed more into gaming - it's one of the few things that entices people to upgrade more often. I could browse, email, use spreadsheets on a 10 year old Mac no problem, but if I used it for gaming it would have been dumped 5 or 6 years ago at least.
except that they dont. most normal people (read: not us reading this) dont ever, ever upgrade their hard drives. the notion is laughable. few upgrade their ram either. normal people just want appliance computing, and apple's been doing an amazing job giving them just that -- apple takes home the majority of profit in PC sales.
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nope. sorry, but you must realize as a techie on an apple enthusiast website, that you do not represent the common consumer.
Meaning that MR thinks that macPro is updated only when they are shipping immediately when ordered?
Upgrading storage and RAM in a Mac is simple..... who doesn't know this already?
Then perhaps you have a guide on how to tear out the soldered memory and flash storage in the rMBPs
Well, the article didn't say HP's and Dell's numbers included tablets. I suspect the author of the article is sophisticated enough to know the difference.
Upgradable?
Most consumers could care less or they are scared to death to touch their PC. They just want something that works, has decent usable life and is affordable. Mac's pass on two of three of those. Many casual consumers just consider a Mac to be too expensive. (They don't buy higher end PC's either.)
That's a pretty small year over year decline.
I would love a new Mac but I just don't need one. When I do have to replace my iMac I will buy another iMac. If I decide to replace my MBA (A 2010 model still going strong), I'll buy another MBA. I'm retiring and have little need for a laptop since the iPad functions well for what I need.
People overthink these sales figures.
Most consumers could care less or they are scared to death to touch their PC. They just want something that works, has decent usable life and is affordable. Mac's pass on two of three of those. Many casual consumers just consider a Mac to be too expensive. (They don't buy higher end PC's either.)
That's a pretty small year over year decline.
I would love a new Mac but I just don't need one. When I do have to replace my iMac I will buy another iMac. If I decide to replace my MBA (A 2010 model still going strong), I'll buy another MBA. I'm retiring and have little need for a laptop since the iPad functions well for what I need.
People overthink these sales figures.
The entire Macintosh line makes up such a small percentage of revenue at Apple these days I seriously doubt they care about plugging tons of investment into this line. As Steve famously said a few years ago we are in the Post PC era. Not saying that Apple will ax it's PC line anytime soon, but less and less focus will be placed on it.
The profit margin is SO much better on the iDevices. Small changes make the consumer go crazy for the "all new" iDevice. Apple got rich because of the iPhone and the best part is they don't even need to invest much into it because people are still nuts over it.
I don't mean just Apple. x86 CPUs get barely faster since some years, and vendors are too hyped about ultrabooks. Add Windows 8 to the mix.
This is the second time Apple has dropped the discrete gpu from one of their 15" machines. This time I don't think it will return. They went to a more expensive cpu class for better integrated graphics. It's always somewhat possible that they'll drift back to their old price points placing the 15" back at a $1800 entry in the US. If you go for a refurbished option at that point, it can drop the cost of entry to the $1400-1600 range, which I think would satisfy more of the budget conscious buyers who want a 15". They are priced high on the 15" models right now. For most brands 15" is the most popular size. With Apple it seems like the cost of entry limits that.
People just don't want to upgrade anything, especially in a laptop! The majority of people who buy computers don't really know how to use the software on them let alone the benefits of more ram or storage. most don't even know the difference between memory and ram!!! They usually buy a hard drive to backup anyway and thunderbolt means you can have fast additional storage for pros and usb 3 for cheaper alternatives. fast wifi for NAS storage etc. The storage on most apple computers is higher than dell etc anyway and I feel like a mech drive is too slow and that current ssd connections are too slow compared to apples speeds. 512gb is enough for me to work on every project i need and dump old projects when they finish or backup and archive them. I don't really know of any laptops that need more than 1TB anyway, my old dual drive laptop had 1.25TB and was excessive.
End of the day Apple make the best machine for the money and all other pc makers are including hybrid tablets anyway. Apple performed very well in a shrinking very competitive area.
I'm kinda glad that the trend is towards iPads as my industry deals with computers only and means less people competing in my field. I personally use iTunes match so my 100GB library is not on my computer, iCloud for photos so they're not on my computer and google drive for files not on my computer. It's only work that is and there's tonnes of space for that as well.
I have an MBP 15 inch I bought new in 2006 (1,1). It's still running fine on Snow Leopard dual booted with Linux Mint. The hinges on the case are deteriorating, but it still works fine so far - 11 years and counting.