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Apple's share of U.S. PC market rises to nearly 11% on strong growth

post #1 of 51
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Apple's share of the U.S. personal computer market rose to nearly 11 percent during the second quarter of 2011, with the Mac maker representing the only major PC manufacturer to report double-digit growth in a market that contracted by more than 4 percent.

Preliminary results released by market research firm IDC indicates that Apple shipped 1.917 million Macs stateside during the three-month period ended June, representing a 14.7 percent increase over the year ago quarter. The performance was strong enough to solidify the Cupertino-based company as the nation's No. 3 PC maker with a 10.7 percent share, up from 9.0 percent during the year ago quarter.

Although PC sales in the United States marked a substantial growth from the first quarter of 2011 with total shipments topping 17.8 million, the segment contracted 4.2 percent on a yearly basis. IDC contributed the decline to three primary factors: the ongoing contraction in the Mini Notebook (Netbook) market as consumers continue to shift towards tablets like the iPad; the second quarter of 2010's difficult-to-sustain 12 percent growth rate; and softened demand from corporate buyers who continue to focus on increasing share of their IT budget in new IT solutions such as cloud and virtualization.

"Given the weakness of [the second half of 2010], we expect a better market environment in [the second half of 2011] with mid-single digit growth rates in the third quarter's back to school and fourth quarter's holiday season," said Rajani Singh, research analyst, United States Quarterly PC Tracker.

IDC's preliminary U.S. PC market share estimates (in thousands) for the second quarter of 2011.

Aside from Apple, Toshiba was the only other major PC maker to report second quarter growth, which came in at just 3.7 percent from the local sale of 1.617 million units. That placed the Windows PC maker in 4th place with a 9.1 percent share of the U.S. market. Behind them was Acer, who saw growth decline more than 25 percent as consumers stopped buying its low-cost and cumbersome notebooks in favor of multimedia tablets like Apple's iPad.

Overall, HP topped the list of U.S. PC makers for the second quarter, shipping 4.692 million units (-0.6 percent growth) for a 2.63 percent share. It was followed by Dell, whose growth declined by a little more than 10 percent to 3.959 million units and a 22.2 percent share.

Meanwhile, rival market research firm Gartner reported for the first time in recent memory the same U.S. market share figure for Apple of 10.7 percent, but offered different figures to support the claim. In particular, Gartner said Apple shipped only 1.814 million systems stateside during the second quarter, representing just 8.5 percent growth compared to its 1.671 million actual shipments during the year ago quarter.

Gartner's preliminary U.S. PC market share estimates for the second quarter of 2011.

Both sets of figures are preliminary estimates and neither factor iPad sales into the mix.

Worldwide, both IDC and Gartner's numbers suggest that Apple could crack the global top 5 soon. Both estimates show Asus with between 4.4 million and 4.5 million total units shipped. Last quarter, Apple reported total Mac shipments of 3.76 million, and sales continue to grow consistently.

In the worldwide market, Gartner's estimates show HP to retain its crown as the market share leader, accounting for 17.4 percent of total global PC shipments in the second quarter of 2011. HP performed better than average in most regions, but was pulled down by a poor showing in the Asia/Pacific region. It shipped an estimated 14.9 million units in the quarter.

Dell took second place with 12.5 percent worldwide on estimated shipments of 10.6 million units, followed by Lenovo (12 percent, 10.2 million), Acer (10.9 percent, 9.3 million), Asus (5.2 percent, 4.5 million), and Toshiba (5.2 percent, 4.4 million).

Gartner found that the global PC market grew 2.3 percent in the quarter, and everyone except Acer and Toshiba saw market gains. Acer continued to drop precipitously as netbook sales wane, sliding 20.4 percent year over year.

"After strong growth in shipments of consumer PCs for four years, driven by strong demand for mini-notebooks and low-priced consumer notebooks, the market is shifting to modest, but steady growth," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "The slow overall growth indicates that the PC market is still in a period of adjustment, which began in the second half of 2010."

IDC's estimates paint a similar picture, with HP atop the market taking an 18.1 percent total share. The Windows PC maker is estimated to have shipped 15.2 million units in the second quarter of 2011.

IDC's preliminary Worldwide PC market share estimates (in thousands) for the second quarter of 2011.

Again in second was Dell, with a 12.9 percent share and 10.9 million units estimated shipped. Lenovo took third with 12.2 percent and 10.3 million, followed by Acer with 10.9 percent on 9.2 million units, and Asus with 5.3 percent on 4.5 million units.

IDC found that the global PC market grew an estimated 2.6 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2011. The greatest market share gainer in the top 5 was Lenovo, which saw a sales increase of 22.9 percent from 2010. Acer again saw the greatest losses in the three-month frame, sliding 10.1 percent.

Gartner's preliminary Worldwide PC market share estimates for the second quarter of 2011.

"These preliminary results continue to reflect pressure from competing consumer and business products as well as cautious spending," said Jay Chou, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. "Nevertheless, product refreshes and promotions in the second half of the year as well as easier year-ago data should boost growth in the second half of the year."
post #2 of 51
The rate of growth will have to start to slow once it gets into the mid-to-upper teens, would be my guess. \

But hey, the rest of the world, here we come!
post #3 of 51
The Mac's market share peaked out during the early '90s at around 12% (if memory serves). If you'd have asked me five years ago if that number was ever achievable again I would have had to say no. Oddly enough, now that Apple is on the verge of making the impossible happen, at the same time, they've made the PC market share figure quite irrelevant, at least to their own business.
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post #4 of 51
Come on, 20%!
post #5 of 51
Would be interested to see this as market share by profit not units. Ballmer was blustering on this - but then we know what happened regarding iPhone vs Windows Mobile phones a few years ago...
post #6 of 51
And that 11% doesn't even include the iPad. Amazing.

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post #7 of 51
Funny... The numbers in the first (IDC) column have commas - if listed as millions - Apple sold almost 2 billion computers.... Wow. Pretty good.

(sarcasm) it would be nice if they got it right (thousands)
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post #8 of 51
As a Marketeer myself I'm always amazed that when dealing with computers, Units are the measurement standard.

I have always been more interested in dollars sold. Dollars sold is a much fairer comparison.

In all other business that I deal with the typical powerpoint slide is never or seldom units sold but almost always dollar sales. Yet IDC never supplies that info.
post #9 of 51
I just gotta see how the hedge fund managers are going to turn this into negative news for Apple.
post #10 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by jd_in_sb View Post

And that 11% doesn't even include the iPad. Amazing.

I find that especially interesting, given Microsoft's recent insistence that tablets are PC's. Just how would Apple's 'PC' market share look if IDC and the rest were to go ahead and honor Microsoft's wishes and count tablet sales as PC sales? Now that would make for an interesting day in Redmond, I imagine.
post #11 of 51
So add them in...
post #12 of 51
One major hold-up is going to be Apple's track-record dealing with corporate or pro.
post #13 of 51
Get ready everyone. Here come the viruses!
post #14 of 51
The iPhone and iPad continue to drive more and more people towards traditional Macs.

The expansion of these embedded devices into the Enterprise will only accelerate large deployments of these traditional Macs.
post #15 of 51
I'm always surprised at Apple's reported slice of market share pie when I walk into a café here in Oakland and Macbook's are easily over 90% of the computers being used.

Is it an age thing? LIke mass media, it's more desirable to sell to the younger demographic, as they buy more music and software.

A Business thing? When I walk into most startups around SF, I see the vast majority are using Macbook pros and iMac's. Maybe it's places like hospitals, govt. and car dealerships that are buying the PCs - places where you just need cheap, commodity hardware that office drones can run Outlook and Office.
post #16 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by apophis View Post

I'm always surprised at Apple's reported slice of market share pie when I walk into a café here in Oakland and Macbook's are easily over 90% of the computers being used.

Is it an age thing? LIke mass media, it's more desirable to sell to the younger demographic, as they buy more music and software.

A Business thing? When I walk into most startups around SF, I see the vast majority are using Macbook pros and iMac's. Maybe it's places like hospitals, govt. and car dealerships that are buying the PCs - places where you just need cheap, commodity hardware that office drones can run Outlook and Office.

It's a geography thing.
post #17 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by apophis View Post

I'm always surprised at Apple's reported slice of market share pie when I walk into a café here in Oakland and Macbook's are easily over 90% of the computers being used.

Is it an age thing? LIke mass media, it's more desirable to sell to the younger demographic, as they buy more music and software.

A Business thing? When I walk into most startups around SF, I see the vast majority are using Macbook pros and iMac's. Maybe it's places like hospitals, govt. and car dealerships that are buying the PCs - places where you just need cheap, commodity hardware that office drones can run Outlook and Office.

I think you hit the nail on the head. The consumer market is such a small piece of the pie, but it's where all the profit is. Businesses, corporation, governments... they don't care about anything but the upfront cost of the machine, and Apple will never win that battle against $250-$300 per unit Dells. The thing of that, though, is that if you don't also sell support and services along with the machine, there is no profit in that market.
post #18 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post

The rate of growth will have to start to slow once it gets into the mid-to-upper teens, would be my guess. \

But hey, the rest of the world, here we come!

I'm not so sure. Everyone I meet is switching and telling friends to switch. What's going to be left are businesses with specific software written for PCs like dentists. Give it five years and Macs will over take PCs.
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post #19 of 51
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Originally Posted by inkswamp View Post

Get ready everyone. Here come the viruses!

Malware requiring you to enter an admin password, maybe.

I'm still waiting for that self-propagating virus for OS X.
post #20 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by cameronj View Post

It's a geography thing.

It's a decision thing.

1. People who buy computers with their own money/to use themselves buy Macs.*
2. People who buy computers with another's money and for others to use, in bulk, are worth bribing.

* An exception, people esp small business who do business with government or major corps may 'need' Windows to interact.
post #21 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by JimDreamworx View Post

Malware requiring you to enter an admin password, maybe.

I'm still waiting for that self-propagating virus for OS X.

It's still a possibility until Apple plugs the PDF-exploit hole discovered last week. It doesn't require anything from the user except clicking on a pdf file. That's all that's needed.

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post #22 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by hittrj01 View Post

I think you hit the nail on the head. The consumer market is such a small piece of the pie, but it's where all the profit is. Businesses, corporation, governments... they don't care about anything but the upfront cost of the machine, and Apple will never win that battle against $250-$300 per unit Dells. The thing of that, though, is that if you don't also sell support and services along with the machine, there is no profit in that market.

I've worked at two large companies during this year, and both of them over the last couple years have been moving everyone to virtual desktops. The local machine might as well be a Pentium 4 running XP. You spend all day logged in via Citrix to a 64-processor back-end server that virtualizes dozens and dozens of desktops.

In that world, there's not a lot of room for Apple.

It's the laptop and local graphics work where Apple still excels, and that tends to be a high-margin, low-market share space. Nothing wrong with that.
post #23 of 51
Microsoft would likely win in that comparison. I guarantee Microsoft's profit margin far outweighs what Apple makes per unit on OS sales alone. Microsoft's profit on software, according to Apple (in previous court documents), is something like 90 percent. Apple is making the OS, to sell the hardware. It has a healthy profit margin on the hardware, but that is lessoned if you throw in development cost for the OS.

Quote:
Originally Posted by t0mat0 View Post

Would be interested to see this as market share by profit not units. Ballmer was blustering on this - but then we know what happened regarding iPhone vs Windows Mobile phones a few years ago...
post #24 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by hittrj01 View Post

I think you hit the nail on the head. The consumer market is such a small piece of the pie, but it's where all the profit is. Businesses, corporation, governments... they don't care about anything but the upfront cost of the machine, and Apple will never win that battle against $250-$300 per unit Dells. The thing of that, though, is that if you don't also sell support and services along with the machine, there is no profit in that market.

Boy, what you said couldn't be much less true. First, the consumer market is not where all the profit is. Exactly the opposite. Also, it's very much untrue to say that businesses only care about the upfront cost of anything. In fact, businesses have the ability, through their tax laws (with amortization of assets) to care a LOT less than most consumers do about the upfront price of technology. This is why business clients are so highly prized in air travel, why most consumers would blanch at the price of "enterprise" laptops and why Wal Mart is installing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of solar panels on their roofs.

Business laptops are the only models that PC makers sell in the $1000+ price range anymore. For business users, time is money. Home users are the ones buying $400 laptops.
post #25 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post

It's still a possibility until Apple plugs the PDF-exploit hole discovered last week. It doesn't require anything from the user except clicking on a pdf file. That's all that's needed.

That's only on iOS I believe, not on OS-X.
post #26 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by Booga View Post

I've worked at two large companies during this year, and both of them over the last couple years have been moving everyone to virtual desktops. The local machine might as well be a Pentium 4 running XP. You spend all day logged in via Citrix to a 64-processor back-end server that virtualizes dozens and dozens of desktops.

In that world, there's not a lot of room for Apple.

Actually I'd say the opposite. The rise of Citrix and virtualization is actually making it easier for Apple to penetrate the enterprise. As companies move people to work from home for one or two days a week (as many do), they are starting to subsidize employee computer purchases - potentially including Apples.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06...taff_get_macs/

As more and more of the messy legacy stuff is virtualized, it matters less that the firm maintains a homogenous desktop population.
post #27 of 51
The Mac now has 35% of the enterprise PC market.
post #28 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by IronTed View Post

The Mac now has 35% of the enterprise PC market.

erm - no
post #29 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by IronTed View Post

The Mac now has 35% of the enterprise PC market.

Only if "tablets are PCs"
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post #30 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by jd_in_sb View Post

And that 11% doesn't even include the iPad. Amazing.

Nearly 11%. It'll be news again when it breaks 11.0%
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post #31 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post

It's still a possibility until Apple plugs the PDF-exploit hole discovered last week. It doesn't require anything from the user except clicking on a pdf file. That's all that's needed.

Still doesn't reach the extreme level of a self-propagating virus, which goes exponential.

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post #32 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by TBell View Post

Microsoft would likely win in that comparison. I guarantee Microsoft's profit margin far outweighs what Apple makes per unit on OS sales alone. Microsoft's profit on software, according to Apple (in previous court documents), is something like 90 percent. Apple is making the OS, to sell the hardware. It has a healthy profit margin on the hardware, but that is lessoned if you throw in development cost for the OS.

Yes, but by the same token, the proper comparison is Apple vs. Dell vs. HP vs. Acer, etc etc etc. It's not Apple vs Microsoft if you are going to compare unit sales. Their "units" are different things. So, if we are going to compare hardware "units" between the above mentioned companies, you better believe that it is increasingly important to include tablets. And Microsoft apparently agrees. That is the previous poster's point.

Thompson
post #33 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by jd_in_sb View Post

And that 11% doesn't even include the iPad. Amazing.

That's exactly what I'm thinking. Netbooks count as laptops, right? Even netbooks that were sold with Ubuntu rather than OSX or Windows, right? Granted, there weren't many of them, but there were a few and they counted.

How much longer with iPads (and tablets in general) continue to NOT be seen as computers?

In the end, it doesn't matter. All that matters is money, and Apple makes money whether an iPad is considered a tablet, laptop, netbook or some other silly term. I come across more and more people who carry around an iPad because it's easier than carrying around a laptop. It's just another kind of computer.

Then again... so is an iPhone...
post #34 of 51
I never really understood why HP always has such a market share command.

Their laptops have had the worst keyboards for years, up until just recently, and they are notorious for overheating.

Funny thing is, I have one! And I totally hate the keyboard and trackpad. A random key falls off every once in a while, too.

I guess it was the performance/dollar? I do still think HP has better customization options at a better price than Dell.

Why do I keep answering my own questions?

I dunno.
post #35 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by cameronj View Post

It's a geography thing.

And, the café even uses an iPad with the Square app as a cash register!
post #36 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by akhomerun View Post

I never really understood why HP always has such a market share command.

Their laptops have had the worst keyboards for years, up until just recently, and they are notorious for overheating.

Funny thing is, I have one! And I totally hate the keyboard and trackpad. A random key falls off every once in a while, too.

I guess it was the performance/dollar? I do still think HP has better customization options at a better price than Dell.

Why do I keep answering my own questions?

I dunno.

Because a positive user experience is difficult to put on a spec sheet. To HP's credit, a few years back they found a way to cut costs and still make their machine "look" as good or better than their direct competitor.

It's the same reason that asshats will say that Apple and their users don't care about specs or that you only buying aesthetics when you get a Mac. Those people never consider the real world use of the product, just what can be listed on a spec sheet.
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post #37 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2oh1 View Post

That's exactly what I'm thinking. Netbooks count as laptops, right? Even netbooks that were sold with Ubuntu rather than OSX or Windows, right? Granted, there weren't many of them, but there were a few and they counted.

How much longer with iPads (and tablets in general) continue to NOT be seen as computers?

In the end, it doesn't matter. All that matters is money, and Apple makes money whether an iPad is considered a tablet, laptop, netbook or some other silly term. I come across more and more people who carry around an iPad because it's easier than carrying around a laptop. It's just another kind of computer.

Then again... so is an iPhone...

With iOS 5.0 the "but you need a computer to activate and sync it" group will no longer have a platform. Then there is MS who is not making an OS designed from the ground up for a tablet, but instead making a web code-based UI for Windows 8 that will work on tablets.

With these two things in play could we actually see the analysts change their categorical stance? I'm gonna say no because even Apple doesn't call it a "PC" but instead a "Post PC device."
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post #38 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

With these two things in play could we actually see the analysts change their categorical stance? I'm gonna say no because even Apple doesn't call it a "PC" but instead a "Post PC device."

Apple needs to start calling them Tablet Computers or TCs - not a PC but not somehow subordinate - and the fact that T comes after P is a subtle cue that they're more advanced
post #39 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevetim View Post

As a Marketeer myself I'm always amazed that when dealing with computers, Units are the measurement standard.

I have always been more interested in dollars sold. Dollars sold is a much fairer comparison.

In all other business that I deal with the typical powerpoint slide is never or seldom units sold but almost always dollar sales. Yet IDC never supplies that info.

From Apple's perspective you are absolutely right. From the perspective of Apple's aftermarket the market share is more important, but more important still would be the installed base. I would love to see that as a number. Mac OS X has the potential of showing favorably there, because the average length of ownership is much longer with Macs than with generic PCs running Windows.
post #40 of 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post

Apple needs to start calling them Tablet Computers or TCs - not a PC but not somehow subordinate - and the fact that T comes after P is a subtle cue that they're more advanced

I think that would be a major strategic error. Apple already has a massive lead in a category they effectively created, to the extent that iPad is now virtually synonymous with the concept of a tablet computer. Placing that category within in a generic wrapper could only serve to weaken Apple's strong position.
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