I'm not a big fan of sweeping & irrelevant figures. I'd like to see consumer market share figures from the segment of the market that applies to me.
Global market share figures are corrupted by 'safe' decisions of self-serving IT departments in large corps/government departments rollinging out new XP/Vista-capable (rather than business-capable) systems so they can build bloated IT support departments. I even heard that Macs were excluded from an entire public sector market area (can't recall if US or Canada) because they couldn't run a windows anti-virus product! With nonsense like that skewing figures I'm with Fuyutsuki. Maybe 8% marketshare isn't so bad as it's the majority of the relevant market sector (the upper 10%)
Nutty prediction. A lot can happen in 10 years. Look at the last 10. Look at the 10 before it. Apple could be out of the computer hardware business (probably not) or dominating the market (probably not) in ten years.
An increase in Mac market share is to be welcomed. But a 5.5% increase over 10 years seems disappointing to me. I thought there was supposed to be a tipping point, where total Mac sales would accelerate exponentially as potential developers and buyers realised it was gaining popularity, and joined the party. Does this not come into the estimate at all?
Apple now has less than 3% world share. to go to 8.3% is a huge increase. While all of us would like to see it even higher, there is no reason to think that an exponential increase will ever be realistic. Why would that happen? There is no reason for it.
It is so obvious that Apple will capture an 8.4% marketshare by 2016. Some of us "Apple fanbois" actually predict that we will get has high as 8.415%!!!
Seriously, anyone who thinks they can predict what Apple's market share will be in 9 years with an accuracy better than, say, +/- 5% is so pretentious as to be unbelievable.
Nine years ago, Apple was "beleaguered" under the jackboot of the Gil Amelio junta. Who can say where Apple will be nine years from now!?
Don't blame Amelio. That is an easy statement to make without knowing what really happened. Without what Amelio did, Apple wouldn't be here today. Don;t forget that under Jobs, for years, Apple's sales and profits went down, and its marketshare dwindled. Only three years ago did it teverse, and I often wonder if Jobs and company didn't just stumble into it.
Remember, Next was a failing company. If Amelio didn't choose to buy it, Jobs would have been out of a, er, job.
Apple now has less than 3% world share. to go to 8.3% is a huge increase. While all of us would like to see it even higher, there is no reason to think that an exponential increase will ever be realistic. Why would that happen? There is no reason for it.
QFT
Changing the ratio of marketshare at this point is sort of like trying to change the salinity of the ocean. You can dump a lot of salt in there before you start to make a dent.
OTOH, salt vendors can do quite well for themselves even if the salinity is very slow to change, because the ocean can absorb a lot of salt.
OK, this is a barely serviceable metaphor, I admit it.
An increase in Mac market share is to be welcomed. But a 5.5% increase over 10 years seems disappointing to me. I thought there was supposed to be a tipping point, where total Mac sales would accelerate exponentially as potential developers and buyers realised it was gaining popularity, and joined the party. Does this not come into the estimate at all?
I guess not, as the quote text below reveals that they never considered "switchers" using the beta version of BootCamp despite the reason for BootCamp's early release was due to a hack job (with hefty reward) because a guy convinced his boss that Windows would run on an Intel Mac.
"A key reason for the upside was stronger than anticipated Mac sales," he wrote. "Evidence that Windows switchers played an important role in the growth of Mac sales even before the introduction of Boot Camp indicated that our previous assumption -- that no Windows users would switch to a Mac in the absence of its ability to run Windows -- was unrealistic."
It wasn't unrealistic, the ability was there since last February!
Apple now has less than 3% world share. to go to 8.3% is a huge increase. While all of us would like to see it even higher, there is no reason to think that an exponential increase will ever be realistic. Why would that happen? There is no reason for it.
Words like 'exponential' and 'obsolete' often bother me as I don't think anyone expects Apple sales to litterly start doubling like processor speeds did in the past, but I do think that there will be a steamrolling effect with Apple computer sales as more and more people start to know more people with Macs and, subsequrntly, start to really notice the benefit of OS X, the Mac's bundled software and knowing they can still run Windows if they desire.
The "I've heard Macs a re better but I don't understood why/how" will no longer linger.
Isn't that a figure for the worldwide market though? Apple has had less than 2% of the worldwide market for a long time, 8% would be a quadrupling.
Yes, exactly.
I'm not quite sure what people here are thinking. An 8.3 % world marketshare would put Apple up at the yop of the heap. It would bring them equal with where Dell and Hp are now. It would also take a percent or two away from them. That would be a great achievement. What has to be considered is that the computer market rises about 10% every year. It isn't static. Apple's marketshare has to rise several times as fast every year.
To reach 8.3% in 2016 would mean that Apple would be selling 30 million machines a year, or more! That would be up from 5.3 million this past year. That's going by the worldwide sales number this year of over 210 million computers, with yearly increases from that.
Changing the ratio of marketshare at this point is sort of like trying to change the salinity of the ocean. You can dump a lot of salt in there before you start to make a dent.
OTOH, salt vendors can do quite well for themselves even if the salinity is very slow to change, because the ocean can absorb a lot of salt.
OK, this is a barely serviceable metaphor, I admit it.
Not really. It's almost a perfect metaphor.
When you are just a pinch of salt, another pinch will double the salinity. When you are near saturation, another pinch will make almost no difference.
For MS, they are near saturation, as are the collective PC makers. The ocean is increasing slightly each year, say, because the glaciers are melting (how's that?). But Apple is just that pinch.
But, as Apple raises their portion, it takes much more than a pinch to make more of a difference.
Once one gets to 50%, the equation changes again. It now becomes easier to increase percentages, because it takes less each time to cover the remaining portion.
This means that MS and the PC companies have to do far less to stay where they are, and Apple has to to far more to increase what they have.
Apple has to increase their sales at least 10% a year just to stay at the marketshare they are currently at.
With their tiny marketshare, less than 3% worldwide, their sales have to go up drastically to have much of an effect.
Words like 'exponential' and 'obsolete' often bother me as I don't think anyone expects Apple sales to litterly start doubling like processor speeds did in the past, but I do think that there will be a steamrolling effect with Apple computer sales as more and more people start to know more people with Macs and, subsequrntly, start to really notice the benefit of OS X, the Mac's bundled software and knowing they can still run Windows if they desire.
The "I've heard Macs a re better but I don't understood why/how" will no longer linger.
Some people here do. It's totally unrealistic.
One problem is that Apple is one company. They are competing against an ecology of PC makers, and MS.
Many companies, and governments, simply won't buy, big time, into Apple, because they are a single source.
I know that he is speaking of the home markets (and possibly schools), but without the business and governmental markets as well, there is only so far that Apple can go.
I really do believe that at some point in time, Apple will again license their OS, but will maintain far greater control over how it is done, perhaps only having one or two companies make machines for it, and only under specified conditions. Restricting machines to catagories that Apple doesn't sell into would be effective now.
This is made possible if Apple continues a successful iPod and software business, and also has a sucessful one in phones, and other areas. This would decrease the cpu portion of the business, even though it would be growing at a good rate. That would allow them to do licensing, and significantly increase the OS and software sales to more than offset the loss of some hardware business.
It's possible that Apple could sell several copies of the OS to those cpu makers for every one loss in sales they have, as well as more of their software. As software has profits up to 80%, this would result in more profit at little loss in total sales. Eventually, it could result in increased sales as well.
Meh, Jobs was already swimming in cash from Pixar by then. I think he would have kept writing checks to keep it alive.
No, he wasn't. Pixar was a very small company for years. It was only about the time that NEXT was bought by Amelio, that Pixar began to do well with Toy Story.
Don't blame Amelio. That is an easy statement to make without knowing what really happened. Without what Amelio did, Apple wouldn't be here today. Don;t forget that under Jobs, for years, Apple's sales and profits went down, and its marketshare dwindled. Only three years ago did it teverse, and I often wonder if Jobs and company didn't just stumble into it.
Remember, Next was a failing company. If Amelio didn't choose to buy it, Jobs would have been out of a, er, job.
Amelio took a cookie cutter aproach to solving the problem he inherited - he cut spending. He laid off a bunch of people and froze everyone's salary. He did this as he wrote off a bunch of inventory ($1 billion pre-tax loss) then made a fat bonus as he turned a slight profit the next quarter. He also paid himself well whenever he flew himself around in his private jet. Employees hated him especially since he hate how engineers dressed in t-shirt and shorts. As the top guy, he bears the responsibility for everything thus he was fired.
Jobs blamed Amelio because he sold all his shares of Apple. Ironic that he turned the company around by buying Next and bringing back Jobs.
I would not put too much faith in a long term projection about market share. Who knows Linux might have 60% of the OS usage by 2016. For all we know VIA will control the CPU market and Nvidia will be gone by 2016! I consider this article garbage.
Based on Apple's rejection to embrace new tech I don't see them growing fast until they redo their hardware restrictions. Let's not forget the Mac's are PC's therefore Apple needs to use the best hardware on the market and stop telling us what is good enough.
On the contrary, the faster and more powerful computers get, the less it matters what's inside. For what the average person does most computers are overkill.
Amelio took a cookie cutter aproach to solving the problem he inherited - he cut spending. He laid off a bunch of people and froze everyone's salary. He did this as he wrote off a bunch of inventory ($1 billion pre-tax loss) then made a fat bonus as he turned a slight profit the next quarter. He also paid himself well whenever he flew himself around in his private jet. Employees hated him especially since he hate how engineers dressed in t-shirt and shorts. As the top guy, he bears the responsibility for everything thus he was fired.
Jobs blamed Amelio because he sold all his shares of Apple. Ironic that he turned the company around by buying Next and bringing back Jobs.
That's a very simplistic version of what went on. It seems popular here.
This analyst has apparently been dipping into the crackjar. Why he even thinks there would be a need for such a long view (so far as the market goes) for his investors makes his judgement highly questionable. If he could accurately tell me what will happen in the next quarter, I'd hire him in a heartbeat.
Comments
Edit: Dammit, has John Dvorak been hacking my account here again?
Global market share figures are corrupted by 'safe' decisions of self-serving IT departments in large corps/government departments rollinging out new XP/Vista-capable (rather than business-capable) systems so they can build bloated IT support departments. I even heard that Macs were excluded from an entire public sector market area (can't recall if US or Canada) because they couldn't run a windows anti-virus product! With nonsense like that skewing figures I'm with Fuyutsuki. Maybe 8% marketshare isn't so bad as it's the majority of the relevant market sector (the upper 10%)
McD (commence firing!)
An increase in Mac market share is to be welcomed. But a 5.5% increase over 10 years seems disappointing to me. I thought there was supposed to be a tipping point, where total Mac sales would accelerate exponentially as potential developers and buyers realised it was gaining popularity, and joined the party. Does this not come into the estimate at all?
Apple now has less than 3% world share. to go to 8.3% is a huge increase. While all of us would like to see it even higher, there is no reason to think that an exponential increase will ever be realistic. Why would that happen? There is no reason for it.
It is so obvious that Apple will capture an 8.4% marketshare by 2016. Some of us "Apple fanbois" actually predict that we will get has high as 8.415%!!!
Seriously, anyone who thinks they can predict what Apple's market share will be in 9 years with an accuracy better than, say, +/- 5% is so pretentious as to be unbelievable.
Nine years ago, Apple was "beleaguered" under the jackboot of the Gil Amelio junta. Who can say where Apple will be nine years from now!?
Don't blame Amelio. That is an easy statement to make without knowing what really happened. Without what Amelio did, Apple wouldn't be here today. Don;t forget that under Jobs, for years, Apple's sales and profits went down, and its marketshare dwindled. Only three years ago did it teverse, and I often wonder if Jobs and company didn't just stumble into it.
Remember, Next was a failing company. If Amelio didn't choose to buy it, Jobs would have been out of a, er, job.
Make a few tweaks in the product line and I could see Apple at 10% my the end of 2007.
That would be 10% US marketshare. Maybe sometime in 2008.
Apple now has less than 3% world share. to go to 8.3% is a huge increase. While all of us would like to see it even higher, there is no reason to think that an exponential increase will ever be realistic. Why would that happen? There is no reason for it.
QFT
Changing the ratio of marketshare at this point is sort of like trying to change the salinity of the ocean. You can dump a lot of salt in there before you start to make a dent.
OTOH, salt vendors can do quite well for themselves even if the salinity is very slow to change, because the ocean can absorb a lot of salt.
OK, this is a barely serviceable metaphor, I admit it.
An increase in Mac market share is to be welcomed. But a 5.5% increase over 10 years seems disappointing to me. I thought there was supposed to be a tipping point, where total Mac sales would accelerate exponentially as potential developers and buyers realised it was gaining popularity, and joined the party. Does this not come into the estimate at all?
I guess not, as the quote text below reveals that they never considered "switchers" using the beta version of BootCamp despite the reason for BootCamp's early release was due to a hack job (with hefty reward) because a guy convinced his boss that Windows would run on an Intel Mac.
"A key reason for the upside was stronger than anticipated Mac sales," he wrote. "Evidence that Windows switchers played an important role in the growth of Mac sales even before the introduction of Boot Camp indicated that our previous assumption -- that no Windows users would switch to a Mac in the absence of its ability to run Windows -- was unrealistic."
It wasn't unrealistic, the ability was there since last February!
Apple now has less than 3% world share. to go to 8.3% is a huge increase. While all of us would like to see it even higher, there is no reason to think that an exponential increase will ever be realistic. Why would that happen? There is no reason for it.
Words like 'exponential' and 'obsolete' often bother me as I don't think anyone expects Apple sales to litterly start doubling like processor speeds did in the past, but I do think that there will be a steamrolling effect with Apple computer sales as more and more people start to know more people with Macs and, subsequrntly, start to really notice the benefit of OS X, the Mac's bundled software and knowing they can still run Windows if they desire.
The "I've heard Macs a re better but I don't understood why/how" will no longer linger.
Isn't that a figure for the worldwide market though? Apple has had less than 2% of the worldwide market for a long time, 8% would be a quadrupling.
Yes, exactly.
I'm not quite sure what people here are thinking. An 8.3 % world marketshare would put Apple up at the yop of the heap. It would bring them equal with where Dell and Hp are now. It would also take a percent or two away from them. That would be a great achievement. What has to be considered is that the computer market rises about 10% every year. It isn't static. Apple's marketshare has to rise several times as fast every year.
To reach 8.3% in 2016 would mean that Apple would be selling 30 million machines a year, or more! That would be up from 5.3 million this past year. That's going by the worldwide sales number this year of over 210 million computers, with yearly increases from that.
QFT
Changing the ratio of marketshare at this point is sort of like trying to change the salinity of the ocean. You can dump a lot of salt in there before you start to make a dent.
OTOH, salt vendors can do quite well for themselves even if the salinity is very slow to change, because the ocean can absorb a lot of salt.
OK, this is a barely serviceable metaphor, I admit it.
Not really. It's almost a perfect metaphor.
When you are just a pinch of salt, another pinch will double the salinity. When you are near saturation, another pinch will make almost no difference.
For MS, they are near saturation, as are the collective PC makers. The ocean is increasing slightly each year, say, because the glaciers are melting (how's that?). But Apple is just that pinch.
But, as Apple raises their portion, it takes much more than a pinch to make more of a difference.
Once one gets to 50%, the equation changes again. It now becomes easier to increase percentages, because it takes less each time to cover the remaining portion.
This means that MS and the PC companies have to do far less to stay where they are, and Apple has to to far more to increase what they have.
Apple has to increase their sales at least 10% a year just to stay at the marketshare they are currently at.
With their tiny marketshare, less than 3% worldwide, their sales have to go up drastically to have much of an effect.
Words like 'exponential' and 'obsolete' often bother me as I don't think anyone expects Apple sales to litterly start doubling like processor speeds did in the past, but I do think that there will be a steamrolling effect with Apple computer sales as more and more people start to know more people with Macs and, subsequrntly, start to really notice the benefit of OS X, the Mac's bundled software and knowing they can still run Windows if they desire.
The "I've heard Macs a re better but I don't understood why/how" will no longer linger.
Some people here do. It's totally unrealistic.
One problem is that Apple is one company. They are competing against an ecology of PC makers, and MS.
Many companies, and governments, simply won't buy, big time, into Apple, because they are a single source.
I know that he is speaking of the home markets (and possibly schools), but without the business and governmental markets as well, there is only so far that Apple can go.
I really do believe that at some point in time, Apple will again license their OS, but will maintain far greater control over how it is done, perhaps only having one or two companies make machines for it, and only under specified conditions. Restricting machines to catagories that Apple doesn't sell into would be effective now.
This is made possible if Apple continues a successful iPod and software business, and also has a sucessful one in phones, and other areas. This would decrease the cpu portion of the business, even though it would be growing at a good rate. That would allow them to do licensing, and significantly increase the OS and software sales to more than offset the loss of some hardware business.
It's possible that Apple could sell several copies of the OS to those cpu makers for every one loss in sales they have, as well as more of their software. As software has profits up to 80%, this would result in more profit at little loss in total sales. Eventually, it could result in increased sales as well.
Remember, Next was a failing company. If Amelio didn't choose to buy it, Jobs would have been out of a, er, job.
Meh, Jobs was already swimming in cash from Pixar by then. I think he would have kept writing checks to keep it alive.
Meh, Jobs was already swimming in cash from Pixar by then. I think he would have kept writing checks to keep it alive.
No, he wasn't. Pixar was a very small company for years. It was only about the time that NEXT was bought by Amelio, that Pixar began to do well with Toy Story.
I'm not quite sure what people here are thinking. An 8.3 % world marketshare would put Apple up at the yop of the heap.
In these market share charts Microsofts share is included with Dell, HP, and Gateways share.
If you took Windows out, Dell's market share in the US would be around 15.5%, HP would be around 9.5% and Gateway around 3%.
Those companies only make the hardware, while Apple is the only company that can account for both OS and hardware.
Don't blame Amelio. That is an easy statement to make without knowing what really happened. Without what Amelio did, Apple wouldn't be here today. Don;t forget that under Jobs, for years, Apple's sales and profits went down, and its marketshare dwindled. Only three years ago did it teverse, and I often wonder if Jobs and company didn't just stumble into it.
Remember, Next was a failing company. If Amelio didn't choose to buy it, Jobs would have been out of a, er, job.
Amelio took a cookie cutter aproach to solving the problem he inherited - he cut spending. He laid off a bunch of people and froze everyone's salary. He did this as he wrote off a bunch of inventory ($1 billion pre-tax loss) then made a fat bonus as he turned a slight profit the next quarter. He also paid himself well whenever he flew himself around in his private jet. Employees hated him especially since he hate how engineers dressed in t-shirt and shorts. As the top guy, he bears the responsibility for everything thus he was fired.
Jobs blamed Amelio because he sold all his shares of Apple. Ironic that he turned the company around by buying Next and bringing back Jobs.
I would not put too much faith in a long term projection about market share. Who knows Linux might have 60% of the OS usage by 2016. For all we know VIA will control the CPU market and Nvidia will be gone by 2016! I consider this article garbage.
Based on Apple's rejection to embrace new tech I don't see them growing fast until they redo their hardware restrictions. Let's not forget the Mac's are PC's therefore Apple needs to use the best hardware on the market and stop telling us what is good enough.
On the contrary, the faster and more powerful computers get, the less it matters what's inside. For what the average person does most computers are overkill.
In these market share charts Microsofts share is included with Dell, HP, and Gateways share.
If you took Windows out, Dell's market share in the US would be around 15.5%, HP would be around 9.5% and Gateway around 3%.
Those companies only make the hardware, while Apple is the only company that can account for both OS and hardware.
MS doesn't have hardware marketshare, to be sure. It's the partnership I was illustrating. I thought that was understood.
Amelio took a cookie cutter aproach to solving the problem he inherited - he cut spending. He laid off a bunch of people and froze everyone's salary. He did this as he wrote off a bunch of inventory ($1 billion pre-tax loss) then made a fat bonus as he turned a slight profit the next quarter. He also paid himself well whenever he flew himself around in his private jet. Employees hated him especially since he hate how engineers dressed in t-shirt and shorts. As the top guy, he bears the responsibility for everything thus he was fired.
Jobs blamed Amelio because he sold all his shares of Apple. Ironic that he turned the company around by buying Next and bringing back Jobs.
That's a very simplistic version of what went on. It seems popular here.