I'm under the impression that market share refers to sales during a given timeframe, whereas installed base refers to usage at a given time.
There currently aren't new copies of WIn95/98/ME being sold that aren't part of a resale of an old computer, and then legacy OSes certainly aren't being accounted for by MS.
I figure these numbers reflect visitor's OS stats to a website or group of websites, not the sales of the OSesl hence installed base. Granted, I could be completely off here.
Good enough.
Market share is simply a breakdown of the percentage of sales in dollars or units of a product or a number of products in a given market. Time is not a part of the formula or the calculation used to determine it, but it is referenced.
Researchers will use a number of criteria to determine market share. The obvious would be to determine how many units of each product in a given category where bought in the same region, in the same time frame. Cost of such an endeavor would be dependent on how you conducted the survey. Mail vs fax vs email. Invidual users vs distributors. Etc.
In the referenced article, the analysist simply based market share by calculating the number of different types of computers used to access a given web sites. This, as the researcher pointed out takes the premise that most pcs are used to access the internet; something that is not or may not be entirely correct and is therefore is subject to question.
What is most important here was the sudden and significant jump in share since Apple's switch to Intel. Because the methology was identical in both cases, the trend as determined by the difference in share is therefore less if not subject to question.
So I have to wonder how many of the PCs being sold are simply replacements for existing machines that are getting tossed.
In May 2004 Gartner analysts expected "almost 100 million PCs to be replaced in 2004 and nearly 120 million more to be replaced in 2005." According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments increased to 188.9 million in 2004 and 218.5 million in 2005. I don't know if Gartner's prediction about the replacement cycle was right but it looks like about 50-55 percent of all PC sold is a replacement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Obviously that is going to be at least somewhat the case for Macs as well, but my suspicion is that a greater percentage of Macs sold are sold as new machines, either to switchers or as an additional machine in a household.
During the latest conference call Peter Oppenheimer stated that "The stores sold 275,000 Macs during the quarter, representing 79% year-over-year growth. As we've been reporting for some time now, over 50% of the customers buying Macs in our stores were new to the Mac." 40-50 percent were loyal, repeat customers and when an existing Apple customer buys a Mac, it's a replacement purchase too, you don't buy a new +$1,000 computer for no reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
My thought here is that PC sales can be thought of as adding water to a leaky bucket where as Mac sales just keep filling up, cumulatively.
The Mac bucket is somewhat less leaky but not by an order of magnitude. And what's wrong with replacement purchases anyway?
Credit Suisse analyst R.Semple: "Based on our estimate for the current iPod lifecycle to be 1.5 years, down from over two years, we believe the company will still be able to deliver attractive growth despite a decline in the number of new iPod users each year. The key takeaway is that if any company can accelerate its product replacement cycle, it becomes less dependent on new user penetration for growth."
Replacement or not, those iPods are boosting Apple's revenue and profits and no one is complaining about this.
Comments
I'm under the impression that market share refers to sales during a given timeframe, whereas installed base refers to usage at a given time.
There currently aren't new copies of WIn95/98/ME being sold that aren't part of a resale of an old computer, and then legacy OSes certainly aren't being accounted for by MS.
I figure these numbers reflect visitor's OS stats to a website or group of websites, not the sales of the OSesl hence installed base. Granted, I could be completely off here.
Good enough.
Market share is simply a breakdown of the percentage of sales in dollars or units of a product or a number of products in a given market. Time is not a part of the formula or the calculation used to determine it, but it is referenced.
Researchers will use a number of criteria to determine market share. The obvious would be to determine how many units of each product in a given category where bought in the same region, in the same time frame. Cost of such an endeavor would be dependent on how you conducted the survey. Mail vs fax vs email. Invidual users vs distributors. Etc.
In the referenced article, the analysist simply based market share by calculating the number of different types of computers used to access a given web sites. This, as the researcher pointed out takes the premise that most pcs are used to access the internet; something that is not or may not be entirely correct and is therefore is subject to question.
What is most important here was the sudden and significant jump in share since Apple's switch to Intel. Because the methology was identical in both cases, the trend as determined by the difference in share is therefore less if not subject to question.
<a bunch of stuff>
Nice post, Abster2Core, good explanation.
So I have to wonder how many of the PCs being sold are simply replacements for existing machines that are getting tossed.
In May 2004 Gartner analysts expected "almost 100 million PCs to be replaced in 2004 and nearly 120 million more to be replaced in 2005." According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments increased to 188.9 million in 2004 and 218.5 million in 2005. I don't know if Gartner's prediction about the replacement cycle was right but it looks like about 50-55 percent of all PC sold is a replacement.
Obviously that is going to be at least somewhat the case for Macs as well, but my suspicion is that a greater percentage of Macs sold are sold as new machines, either to switchers or as an additional machine in a household.
During the latest conference call Peter Oppenheimer stated that "The stores sold 275,000 Macs during the quarter, representing 79% year-over-year growth. As we've been reporting for some time now, over 50% of the customers buying Macs in our stores were new to the Mac." 40-50 percent were loyal, repeat customers and when an existing Apple customer buys a Mac, it's a replacement purchase too, you don't buy a new +$1,000 computer for no reason.
My thought here is that PC sales can be thought of as adding water to a leaky bucket where as Mac sales just keep filling up, cumulatively.
The Mac bucket is somewhat less leaky but not by an order of magnitude. And what's wrong with replacement purchases anyway?
Credit Suisse analyst R.Semple: "Based on our estimate for the current iPod lifecycle to be 1.5 years, down from over two years, we believe the company will still be able to deliver attractive growth despite a decline in the number of new iPod users each year. The key takeaway is that if any company can accelerate its product replacement cycle, it becomes less dependent on new user penetration for growth."
Replacement or not, those iPods are boosting Apple's revenue and profits and no one is complaining about this.