Mac OS X install base grows to over 6% worldwide, 13% in the US - Page 2

There is no way I'll spend money on Microsoft products right now. My Vista experience has been so bad that I just hate MS for putting it out. They stole more than one work week worth of hours from me because of needing to be on the telephone with tech support.

I don't work in the programming field so I don't really need a Microsoft product. What I do need it for is to stream videos from Starz. They aren't set up for Mac or Linux. I have a web site creation program that only works in Windows. The only other thing I use in Windows is an encryption program for PDF files. When Linux and OS X can do everything for me I'll be done with Microsoft.

13.5% in the US is significant, as it's 1 in 6 PCs. Up from what? 4-5% just a few years ago.

The trend is bad for Microsoft, especially in a key market.

Who cares what they use in Africa, India or China. They probably didn't pay for it.

I brought up Lion because its still generating buzz and sales. I think this will trend upwardly.
I have my issues with Lion as well but it is still a very nice OS. I still prefer SL over any other OS out there. I keep going back and forth between SL and Lion.:-)

And score one more for the list of people no one should take seriously due to beliefs.

"Who cares?" Apple does, for sure. In the first half of 2011, Greater China accounted for 10% of Apple sales, a growth of over 4x from the prior year.

What an ignorant little post. Your first, at that.

I remember those. I had a Mac Plus when I was a kid, well it wasn't mine, but I got to use it everyday.

Hmmm1/3 of worldwide PC profits is the number that should make Apple shareholders and stakeholders smile.

The Mac market share will NEVER pick up unless Apple can sell a fully functional Mac OS X desktop or laptop for under $500, period....they would have to hit the low price points to be able to compete on a series "takeover market-share" level with the PC market. When you can buy a 15" or 17" PC laptop for under $500, and the MacBook Pros of this size range go for $1799 - $2799....most people simply can't justify spending this much for a laptop (and I am talking about most of the worldwide computer base)...in some countries of the world, that is more money than they would make in a YEAR....so....Apple must lower their price points if they seriously want to compete on the PC side of things in taking over more market share with the Mac.

This has always been the issue with Mac and the much-lower market share: Very high price-points that discourage the average user from investing in a Macintosh.

And, the Mac Mini doesn't count....I am talking about a full machine like the iMac or a flagship machine hitting the sub-$500 price point.

Life must be fun with the blinders on.

The thing about the market share figures for desktop OS's is that they are always heavily weighted towards industry and business. Call centres, and businesses of al kinds run huge numbers of windows machines that skew the numbers towards Windows, making the market share figures not really representative of consumer choice.

In 2008 for instance, Apple's market share for desktop OS's was much lower, yet one in every four consumer desktop computer purchases (roughly 25%), was a Mac that year.

Theses new numbers, indicate that Macs have an even higher adoption rate now and as with most things to do with share, the trend is far more important than the absolute share numbers.

There is no way to spin this other than it being a very serious problem for MS Windows. You can scoff all you like, but by the time the numbers get high enough for even *you* to be worried, Windows will already be too far behind to matter.

I bet that 13% share in the US would be a really interesting number to decompose. My hunch is that it is heavily concentrated among higher income consumers. In fact, among that demographic, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's share is in the ballpark of 50%.

These high-end consumers are Apple's best (and right now only) "boots on the ground" for getting Macs into business.

Even though Apple's most visible marketing efforts are focused on consumers and iOS, Apple has been quietly increasing the number of business-friendly checkboxes that Macs can satisfy (as clients, of course, not as servers). Every checkbox that gets checked (one recent important one was full disk encryption -- something that matters very little to consumers but quite a bit to business and government) makes it easier for these high-end employees who use Macs at home to win the argument with IT to get Macs inside a company.

I would hope that Apple might start taking this stealth move into business out of the shadows and begin more actively pursuing business customers. I don't mean through television ads, but rather through a more overt business-centric sales and support effort. It might also make sense to change some aspects of Mac marketing, for example to become a little less secretive about future plans for features of OSX that matter to business users, so that business customers can see a long term commitment to them (which they need more than consumers).

I think Steve Jobs was (understandably) extraordinarily disgusted by business customers based on his experiences at NeXT. I'm not sure that he would have ever made a serious effort to pursue this market. Perhaps one upside to his stepping down as CEO might be that Apple can now go after this market.

Yeah, and they had 99% of WHITE consumer desktop purchases.

If you narrow down your "market" you can come up with ever more positive numbers, but the fact is, there's no reason why you would disallow all those "unimportant" business sales that make up over half the market. I mean, how dumb!?! Those sales COUNT!

Which planet do you live on where Apple has not been gaining market share for the past 5 years?

The fact is that in spite of your cheapskate whining, Apple IS doing very well. And, unlike most of the PC vendors, they're making money - which means that their future is pretty well assured.

Your snarkiness notwithstanding, I think that Business v. Consumer is quite a legitimate breakdown to explore, while white v. non-white is not. It is quite possible that a non-trivial part of the low profit margins for Windows-based PC-makers is explained by their dependence on business sales (indeed, it would be interesting to see data on their profit margins in the B v. C segment).

I am not sure that Apple should aspire to be a seller to businesses. I just don't think they'll do well on that front since - this probably sounds a bit squishy - it's just not a part of their corporate DNA.

I think it goes without saying that the OP meant market share picking up above "tiny" or maybe above 10% or so. The correct response is that Apple doesn't want, or need, market share that gets too high, because it will imply lower profitability. If Apple could price each computer individually, then it could sell someone a $1200 computer and someone else a $500 computer, based on their willingness to pay and their finances. But since that is not possible, Apple would end up selling both of those users $500 computers, and you can see quite clearly that Apple would much rather sell 1 $1200 computer than two $500 ones, and will happily continue doing so.

Quite a legitimate breakdown to explore? What does that mean? Of course it's a legitimate breakdown, but that doesn't mean it holds any value in this discussion. Apple doesn't have high market share of the entire PC market, and it never will, because there are a TON of sales that Apple can't compete for. Period. You can't just say "oh if we just ignore all these says where Apple doesn't have a competitive offering, Apple has GREAT market share!" It makes no sense and it's just deluding yourself.


Of course they shouldn't. But it's stupid to ignore that fact and claim that Apple has high market share of some small and arbitrary segment of a huge market.

Apple earns all the profits and an outsize portion of the revenue in the PC market. That's all anyone needs to worry about. Unit market share is unimportant as long as Apple doesn't suffer from a lack of network effects, which they don't.

This wouldn't have looked quite as silly if you'd posted it ten years ago.

Given the increase in marketshare, both U.S. and internationally, over the past three or four years, it just looks like either a poor troll, or failed sarcasm.

Sure, but they don't all count equally.

You can shove a lot of bare bones boxes into call centers and onto warehouse inventory desks for relatively little. Each one doesn't help the bottom line (or stock price) nearly as much as do sales to end users who want what a slightly more expensive system can provide them.

They do...they have the iPad....it is their foray into that market and they are doing quite well with it....

Meanwhile, Samsung was caught in ANOTHER LIE AGAIN.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Sales 20K, not 2 Million

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392422,00.asp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ung-galaxy-tab

It's encouraging that over 50% of people are still using XP. That probably means they have old computers, and may be looking to upgrade at some point. The Win 7 people are those who have recently upgraded and already decided against a Mac.

Slow Internet connection you have there. You hit send in 2003 and it just now got here.


But they can justify paying $500 every two years while the MacBook Pro owner goes five or six without needing to update?


Good thing Apple's not trying to do that at all, then. Otherwise we'd have a real problem.


Except it does.


You keep thinking that.

This is consumer share. Enterprise sales are included and are a fair chunk of the total. To be 13% of all computers is therefore to be >20% ( at least) of consumer devices, which is what you see.

deleted

Literally, out in the world. Macs. Macs EVERYWHERE.

Now the numbers make sense, thanks.

but Apple is not competing in that market in any meaningful way. And ignoring enterprise sales would be important to a game developer, for instance, who was trying to work out how much he increases his market in the US for his game. Answer: 27%

No it is a company and we've been around for a long, long time. Also back in the early days, Macs would cost us $15K-$20K to get set up with large monitors, ram, hard drives, scanners, printers, etc. It doesn't take too many workstations to get to $100K at those prices, especially after 20+ years. The real figure is more like 5 times that much if you count the Sun Sparcs and Windows boxes. All thrown away. You use them as long as you can but since it is a business you need to have newest equipment to stay competitive... and why would I want old useless junk sitting around taking up valuable work space?

Well I didn't consider flipping hamburgers as a real world job. Sure that doesn't require knowledge of Windows. Seriously, what industry segment aside from graphic design would you not need to know how to work with Windows computers?

I agree - I started with 2 SE's and 1 iiCX, using Word, Excel and Filemaker Pro in 1989 for my small manufacturing business. Kept them for years until the mid 90's before upgrading.

They did everything virtually seamlessly even then, so don't know where your comment is coming from, you're talking out of your §*se!

TRue or Not it wouldnt be the first time Samsung LIED.

So in 10 more years will they break 10%??

Apple lost the computer market share a LONG time ago, it is never going to change. Hence the intense focus on anything iOS.

At work we can hardly get any help from Apple anymore for things like OD/AD integration. We used to be able to, but its like the whole Enterprise support team is simply gone. I look at my Xserve in the rack and wonder what I will do when it needs replacingget a Mini server??

I hear you. It is painful every time I have to use it.

Well they got the '2' right

Maybe they are counting in the refrigerators they sold which basically have the Galaxy tab built into the door.

Congratulations to Apple. All that hard work and attention to detail is paying off.

Actually, 13.5% is between 1 in 7 and 1 in 8.

Clearly Apple is doing well. Microsoft's problem is no so much loss of share to Apple, but rather the fact that they have saturated the market and it would be very difficult for them to grow - even if they had 100% share.


Probably. It is known that Apple sells the majority of machines over $1,000.


I suspect the Lenovo guy is way too low. However, I think it's fair to say that Samsung sold a lot less than the 2 M they claimed.


Any number of jobs.

1. Many clerical jobs are using web-based apps. It doesn't matter which platform you use.
2. Scientific jobs are still highly Mac-based
3. College professors use a higher percentage of Macs than the general population
4. Executive positions. Since you're doing memos, presentations, and spreadsheets much of the time, either platform works fine.
5. If you have a single Windows-based app you must use, it can easily be done on the Mac with Parallels or another VM. It can be set up so you never have to use Windows directly - just the app.

This "you MUST use Windows" mentality hasn't been true in most jobs for years.


What part of "Apple wants profit, not market share" don't you understand?

See, the problem is that Apple can't turn around and start reporting units sent to Apple Stores and resellers as "sold" because they'll just wind up with the exact same numbers as before.


'Profit', 'comma', and 'not', it seems.

Apple's lowly percentage of units sales makes them 1/3 of the world's 'PC' profits. That's makes them the most profitable 'PC' market on the planet, and by a large margin. That sounds like losing to you?


So you're claiming they don't focus on anything but iOS, yet Macs keep being copied over and over again. The newest is the 'PC' industries UltraBooks using a milled aluminium chassis, chicklet keyboard, and other key features that were scoffed at by you and your ilk when Apple first introduced them. That sounds like losing to you?

I am not claiming anything. Apple makes less than 1/3 of its money on the Mac. Other vendors that basically sell only computers may copy them....so what????

The fact is in Q2 2011 85million Windows PC's were sold. 6% is great, but I look at those charts and 92% is a tad better. Those number have barely moved in 10-15 years. I never said anything about profit, market share only.

I never switch from windows either. My first mac was also the LC. Prior to that Sinclair Spectrum 48/128, Atari ST, and Texas Instruments TI994A.

That means Apple makes a shit of money worth protecting and growing.


That's their fault for being a one-trcik pony. You need to evolve with markets or risk becoming extinct.


And 6% of them were from Apple. A tremendous achievement when you consider that Apple doesn't even sell consumer 'PCs' in the price ranges most of those 85M were sold.


Again, you ignore business models and basic economic understanding. Apple will never have 92% because they sell 'PCs', not an OS to sell to 'PC' makers, hence you are comparing different markets as if they are being sold the same way. What does HP, the largest PC maker in the world have; about 22% and little profit to show for it? You honestly think that's a better situation to be in?


Barely moved? Hasn't Apple tripled it's percentage of the total market, while the market has continued to grow expand thus requiring them to sell even faster than simply trying to triple their own sales. But that's beside the point, why are focusing on marketshare when Apple (and any well run company) is focusing on maximizing profits)? Why are you belittling Apple's dominant take over the 'PC' industry as if they are losers who should gracefully bow out of the game instead of trying to sell Macs?