Mac sales grow 11.8% as Apple takes 9.4% U.S. market share - Page 2

Yes, my fingers are known for starting entire new industries at a mere touch.

It's pretty much the most annoying mouse ever produced, second only to the hockey puck from the original iMac. Just use any Logitech of your choice, and discover a better world.

Yes, I do. I also read that Bloomberg report. You should as well.

Actually, there are articles that say that the Win 7 release will trigger another round of upwards sales for Apple.

I hink that we're going to find a lot of XP users who are going to be very unhappy once they find out what it takes to upgrade to 7.

As opposed to Apple fan boi?

Acer's growth shouldn't be discounted. 'Next to nothing'? What does that mean? Sure, they don't have Apple's margins. Who does? Oh. Apple.

But clearly they, Acer, are profitable or they are going out of business soon selling that many at a loss. Clearly there's a demand for a netbook style product. And clearly Apple aren't immune from market forces.

Apple don't have to be cheap. But they could be cheap-'er'. How long they can resist the gravitational pull of 'netbooks' and ever falling PC prices...who knows.

But if PC companies are worried about 'what to do about netbooks', then perhaps Apple can show them? (Tablet pending...?)

For me, it would be very interesting to see what Apple's marketshare numbers would be like if they had a mid-tower and a netbook. We may never get to find out.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Even more to the point, if you follow these numbers quarter after quarter, you will see that the Windows PC makers are constantly trading market share with each other, but that overall, the Windows PC market has been growing in only the low single digits for several years running now, which is very poor performance. Lest we forget, it's Apple against the Windows OEMs, not Apple against Acer, or Apple against Dell or HP or Toshiba. Compare meaningful things.

I was just listening to what Acer President Gianfranco Lanci said today:

http://earthlink.com.com/8301-31021_...part=earthlink

Not if they all buy new PCs.

I don’t think it’ll help or hurt Apple’s sales when it launches but I do think that marketshare my suffer a little for the holiday season despite Apple having another record YoY quarter and there largest Mac quarter ever with about 2.85M Macs, which is about 7 to 8 months of non-Holiday Mac sales from just 3 years ago.



I don’t think comparing all PC pamers using a specific OS to a lone PC maker using a different OS when looking at HW sales very meaningful. I see your point and understand that people that tend to buy Mac are less likely to jump to a different manufacturer when they make their next choice, while a Windows user has many options, but I still think OS comparisons are valid here.

We see it all the time with the TeckStuds and NoVendorFans/SeaHawkFans. They look at that Apple’s HW sales convert that to their OS sales and say Apple sucks because Windows is on x-many PCs. Yet they never look at the HW vendors themselves, their profits and their market segments.

If you are an Apple stockholder, you shouldn’t care if 1B netbooks are 17M more netbooks running Win7 are sold next quarter, essentially cutting Apple’s HW and OS marketshare in half, so long as they are selling more than the quarter before. I wonder what the adjusted numbers would be if netbooks were excluded from the PC HW sales?

My personal opinion of netbooks is that they are barely useable. The more portable you make a desktop system, the less useable they become. Desktop operating systems are designed for desktop systems with good sized screens. While netbooks might be nice in the portability department, it is very easy to become tired of trying to get things done on screens that small. I had a 12" iBook and that screen size was at my lower limits of being able to get any serious work done. This was especially true when multiple windows were needed.

Anyone who thinks they're getting a laptop when they buy a netbook will not be satisfied if they need it for more than just casual use and even then I'd wager that most of them would prefer doing most of that on their smartphones.

Realistically, profits matter highly. If you read that Bloomberg report, you'll see that Acer themselves aren't happy about the situation.

But PC companies have gotten themselves stuck in this low price spiral, which is what it is.

The companies are concerned about netbooks, not because they don't know what to do with them, but because they see their customers abandoning more highly priced, and profitable machines.

Competition is good, but it has its bad side as well.

Consumers want lower prices, but they don't always understand the downside to lower pricing.

Netbooks have problems running any but the simplest programs. I can attest to that. The industry got themselves into a bind here. Netbooks were at first thought to be a solution for people who couldn't afford even the cheap $500 laptops that were already draining the companies profits.

But people who could afford the more expensive machines, and who would have bought them, are now buying netbooks. A lot of people aren't that happy with them, and have returned them, but most find them to be enough.

What I do find interesting is that the first netbooks almost all came with some version of linux. Netbooks were thought to be understood by those buying them to be mostly for running net related apps. But no. People wanted to run their regular apps.

So the Linux books went back in droves.

This was the best chance EVER for desktop (or laptop) Linux to gain a stronghold, and it failed big time.

Manufacturers REALLY wanted to sell Linux machines so that they wouldn't have to pay MS the $15 for the OS. Now, the 7 Starter equivalent will cost them almost $50, from what MS is saying.

How are they going to sell $200 to $400 machines when the OS is almost $50?

Apple will be coming out with somewhat less expensive machines soon. They don't have to match netbook pricing, or even come close. They just have to move down somewhat, and they will snare more people.

If you compare this interview to the Bloomberg article, you will find that one of them does not contain the word "profit"... guess why?

I think it's not terribly meaningful to compare Apple to any one OEM because over time I see the OEMs constantly trading market share with each other, but in the aggregate not expanding the market for Windows PCs significantly. I think Apple is doing something each and every one of the OEMs would dearly love to replicate: consistently expanding their sales at double-digit rates. If you simply compare any given OEM to Apple in any given quarter, you won't see the big picture.

Boy, that didn't take too long. What? 2-3 posts in and you win the award for the first whiner!

My 5-year-old iMac G5.

Once again, someone assuming that what is perfect for them is perfect for everyone.

You were listening to it?

He doesn't say much, does he? It's the same thing chairmen and CEOs say.

I did think it was interesting where he said that they didn't EXPECT revenues to decline this year. not that they will grow. Not that they would remain steady, but that he didn't EXPECT that they would decline.

Not exactly very certain, is he? Sort of a wishy washy comment.

He didn't even say that performance was good. He didn't say that he was happy with it.

ACER is selling cheap machines. They own Gateway, E-Machines, Packard Bell, and their own brand.

Operating margins are 2.2%. Yes, that's not a typo.

Nothing is perfect. It's all a mater of tradeoffs.

I’m sure they do trade around since they are using the same OS, but to separate all non-Mac PCs from Mac PCs doesn’t make much sense to me. Now we have 91% non-Mac PCs compared to 9% Mac PCs in the US for both the OEM and the OS. The OS shouldn't make us divide one OEM from all the others, otherwise why not add all Mac to the non-Mac PCs since Macs can also load Windows?

Further proof tht Apple knows exactly what they're doing, especially when it comes to understanding the market.

This I agree with.

absolutely agree...who buys a pc these days when you can do everything with an iphone / ipod touch? i'd like to see those numbers, and how they relate to the pc ones...

What's he saying? His new iMac is about to become old - real fast. Then we will have our new non glAre industrial iMac !

No need to confirm that you drink from the same cup

Ouch.

Sales are up but they're hardly making any money. It's what happens when you head straight for the bottom. And you get just that . . . horrid netbooks. Even Michael Dell - of all people - admitted it:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10...l_club_speech/

I don't know when, but I am sure that something will happen. I know that Apple got a lot of negative feedback from businesses here in Europe, and I know two art schools that went from Mac to PC after over 20 years, only because of the glare issues and for no other reason. Even if this is only 1 or 2% of the market, it is an important part and it includes a lot of people that have high public visibility and supported Apple all the time. Apple has so far been the only company I know that reduced models and options while gaining market share. This has a limit. No idea where it is, but it definitely exists.

TeckDud, even you must realize it's not how many you sell that's important, it's how much your net profit is after you're finished selling. Considering that Acer's main thrust is the lower cost netbook, etc, and Apple is not even in that market makes me glad my money is on Apple .... that and the stock's performance, of course.

As Forrest Gump says...stupid is as stupid does.

I think that's what the numbers do already -- add them all together, as if the companies can't be distinguished from one another in any useful way. Even if you don't buy my division of Apple from the OEM pack, the comparative growth numbers between Apple and the balance of the industry still apply. The trends would not be so impressive had they not been going on for so long. Put it this way, despite what the numbers from this quarter say, Acer is probably not actually making a move on HP and Dell. The only steady gainer over the past couple of years has been Apple.

Show me any other computer manufacturer with a better balance sheet than Apple then I might agree with you. I can tell you of lots of companies with a great "market share" but they still go broke, so what's the value of market share? ..... nothing, absolutely nothing ... except bragging rights and that might satisfy one's ego ... but it does nothing for your bank balance.

Good one .... ROFLMAO

We don't do that because most people don't buy Macs to primarily use Windows. A small few may. Most of the rest that have Windows just use it a little bit, or are weaning themselves off it.

You might as well say that not all Windows PC are Windows PCs because they also have Linux on them.

You're playing the semantics game with this.

Ah, you'll have to replace it at some point.

You forgot to mention that Apple accounts for nearly all of the PROFITS resulting from PC sales.

Again TeckDud, fyi ... sales growth absolutely does not automatically equate to success ... does acer make as much profit as Apple? If I sell 1 computer and make 500.00 profit and you sell 4 computers and make 100.00 on each are you a more profitable company than me? HINT 4x100.00=400.00, 500.00 is bigger than 400.00 ... I can't dumb it down any further for you ....Sorry.

And they'd be even happier if they showed the same profit as Apple does.

ACER looks to be going the way Dell went. Dell sold ever cheaper machines in a hopeless quest to become the worlds biggest seller of PCs. In that quest they went from being a well run, profitable company with good margins, to a marginal company.

When Michael Dell came back, he acknowledged that his company done wrong. That's why they bought Alien, and came out with a more expensive luxury brand.

But they kept on selling cheap junk, because that's what their customers expected, and they didn't want to lose them.

Sales are sliding, profits are getting harder to come by.

Now ACER is following their lead. The chairman announced that they surpassed Dell in worldwide marketshare, and they hoped to pass Hp.

All on the back of netbook sales.

Meanwhile, sales in dollars were down, and profits were down. They cut their dividend.

Good move!

I hope they keep it up.

So what's the story behind Toshiba?

Particularly in the US. Are they big on the netbook scene too?

Not as much. I bought my daughter early this summer before she went away to school, a Toshiba netbook, a Mini NB205. Good for a netbook, but not good. Just usable for what she needed during the summer in a new country. Skype, Internet, IM, etc.

Now that she started the fall semester, she has a 15" MBP 2.8 GHz.

Yes I am, that was my point. When comparing HW sales each company should be accounted for seperately, not lumping them all into one giant conglomerate simply because they don't run OS X natiely.