Apple's share of U.S. PC market slips on sales decline

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  • Reply 81 of 168
    zunxzunx Posts: 620member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wealthychef View Post


    Unless there is something radical about it, I don't see a small tablet selling to anyone outside a Star Trek fan group.C.



    There is. See my previous post: "The idea is NOT to work on the device".
  • Reply 82 of 168
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Daniel001 View Post


    A 0.1 percent fall in market share in the current circumstances doesn't seem like much of a calamity to me.



    Actually, that's year to year. Apple had gotten to 8% and then gave back 6 points in one quarter.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I'd say that is damn good. HP and Acer seemed to only increase because of netbook sales, which we know don't profit the company much.



    Toshiba is getting close to overtaking Apple without them though.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bodypainter View Post


    sorry, but i can not believe that apple really wants to have market share. why not? well, if they REALLY would like to have market share, they'd have to put the price tag of the mac mini to seducing 349 US$, or the mac book price tag to 699 US$.



    i fear that apple is actually more interested in generating money, and with a cheap product you can't.



    Making money actually actually requires people buying their stuff which equates to marketshare. Also, since Apple does use higher margins every sales helps the bottom line a bit, but the opposite is also true. Every lost sale hurts Apple more than the competition.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by heavydevelopment View Post


    As long as they sell enough to keep their current level of innovation...



    That might not take a whole lot as there hasn't been much innovating in the computer area lately, the iPhone and IPod lines seem to be getting all that. The Mini has been using the same case for 4 years, the cheese grater is almost six, the iMac has been updated style wise but uses a squeezed and feature robbed version of 5 year old iMac, and Macbooks have gotten so thin that Apple had to create an entirely new connector to prevent them from losing most of their ports. I do have to hand it to them on the glass keyboard and the hicap battery in the 17" though and the cool features the Mac Pro team has had to dream up to get around Ive's refusal to move past the G5 case. That seems a lot more like the innovative Apple I remember.
  • Reply 83 of 168
    luisdiasluisdias Posts: 277member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by synp View Post


    Nice analogy, but netbooks are not mopeds.



    With a netbook, you can read email, surf the net (with all the frills - flash, silverlight, AJAX just works), run any office suite - MS, Open. You can run photoshop very well - computers were powerful enough for that that it didn't matter any more when they crossed the 1GHz barrier. You can also run iTunes, VLC, run development environments, read or edit PDFs. In short you can do anything you use a laptop for.



    Really? All that inside a 6GB hard drive? Impressive. Because hey, we all know that if it has enough space to contain iTunes, it must also have enough space to contain music, movies and the likes, yes? And games too, of course. I can easily imagine someone having thousands of musics, videos, while surfing the net and playing the immense choice one has with windows game titles...



    Come on, turn on your brain. I've got an old laptop with a 120GB hard disk and if I hadn't an external 500GB disk I'd be dead in the water. There are a lot of other people out there that don't necessarily work exclusively in "office", you know?





    Quote:

    (...)All those things will run on a netbook, but probably not well enough.



    "Probably", that's the biggest understatement in this thread.



    Quote:

    The actual set of things you can do with a laptop and can't do with a netbook is actually very small.



    Listen, if all you do is chat on MSMessenger and on apple websites, while pretending to make a homework paper in MS Word, then yes, you have a point. Otherwise, you don't. Video editing is impossible by definition for you don't have enough space to do it. You don't have enough space to put your music library, and forget about games. Mostly, you'll have space for the OS, for Office, and all the other programs you'll choose, for all the word documents, and one game or two (small). That's it.





    But to make things even clearer, consider this. The iPhone has 16 GB, and the iPod Touch 32GB. It has a smaller screen, but here you are, you can make docs, you can make spreadsheets, you can surf the net and it's way way more mobile and cool.



    If a netbook is a "pc", how come then these two aren't? Where to draw the line then?
  • Reply 84 of 168
    luisdiasluisdias Posts: 277member
    I'd like to comment on the general news.



    From the comments I've read so far, I can conclude that:



    1. Acer's growth came about the fusion with Gateway. Hardly impressive;



    2. Apple stalled in market share, while HP skyrocketed and Dell is going down in flames. Still, most "growth" that came about in PCs were netbooks. Curious products but with zero margin, which means that it may be somewhat good for the general public (very cheap access to a semi-functioning computer, but with manufacturing quality a mistery of itself), but terrible for the corporations, because it may be cannibalizing their laptops (I say frak them. Isn't that what "creative destruction" in capitalism means?);



    3. Apple doesn't sell netbooks, the closest it has with that are the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have good margins, not bad, for they have no competition (yet). This means that while mac sales may have been slightly been cannibalized with iPods and iPhones (doubt it, but for the sake of the argument), then they would have had cannibalized a good margin product with another good margin product. Which is much better than anyone else in the industry can say;



    4. All the industry declined, which means Apple declined as well. I say we're still to see the bottom of the market.



    5. These are all "guesses", which could be wrong. But I doubt it, the general premisse sounds credible (less people wanting pcs, more market share going to netbooks, apple maintaining share).







    The showdown of 2009 will be tied first to the iPhone. It's new 3.0 OS is incredible, and if they add video editing and direct upload to youtube (and others), it's another small revolution. It will also be tied to the OS 10.6. If SL really gets the overall experience better, faster and more powerful, it will be interesting to watch its fight with windows seven.
  • Reply 85 of 168
    urgonurgon Posts: 1member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by LuisDias View Post


    Really? All that inside a 6GB hard drive? Impressive. Because hey, we all know that if it has enough space to contain iTunes, it must also have enough space to contain music, movies and the likes, yes? And games too, of course. I can easily imagine someone having thousands of musics, videos, while surfing the net and playing the immense choice one has with windows game titles...



    Come on, turn on your brain. I've got an old laptop with a 120GB hard disk and if I hadn't an external 500GB disk I'd be dead in the water. There are a lot of other people out there that don't necessarily work exclusively in "office", you know?









    "Probably", that's the biggest understatement in this thread.







    Listen, if all you do is chat on MSMessenger and on apple websites, while pretending to make a homework paper in MS Word, then yes, you have a point. Otherwise, you don't. Video editing is impossible by definition for you don't have enough space to do it. You don't have enough space to put your music library, and forget about games. Mostly, you'll have space for the OS, for Office, and all the other programs you'll choose, for all the word documents, and one game or two (small). That's it.





    But to make things even clearer, consider this. The iPhone has 16 GB, and the iPod Touch 32GB. It has a smaller screen, but here you are, you can make docs, you can make spreadsheets, you can surf the net and it's way way more mobile and cool.



    If a netbook is a "pc", how come then these two aren't? Where to draw the line then?



    You do know that most netbooks have a 120-160 GB harddrive?

    And even those that don't - like my ASUS GO that has a 20 GB SSD drive + 32 GB SD-card - can do almost everything an ordinary PC can do. You can't play HD-movies or advanced games. But everything else works great - and you can work just as effectively as on an ordinary PC.

    Plus: I get up to 7 hour battery life, 3 USB-ports AND I have a built in 3G-modem so I can connect to the internet anywhere anytime.



    Apple will have to get into this market somehow, and soon.
  • Reply 86 of 168
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    What happened to Dell??



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by LuisDias View Post


    I'd like to comment on the general news.



    From the comments I've read so far, I can conclude that:



    1. Acer's growth came about the fusion with Gateway. Hardly impressive;



    2. Apple stalled in market share, while HP skyrocketed and Dell is going down in flames. Still, most "growth" that came about in PCs were netbooks. Curious products but with zero margin, which means that it may be somewhat good for the general public (very cheap access to a semi-functioning computer, but with manufacturing quality a mistery of itself), but terrible for the corporations, because it may be cannibalizing their laptops (I say frak them. Isn't that what "creative destruction" in capitalism means?);



    3. Apple doesn't sell netbooks, the closest it has with that are the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have good margins, not bad, for they have no competition (yet). This means that while mac sales may have been slightly been cannibalized with iPods and iPhones (doubt it, but for the sake of the argument), then they would have had cannibalized a good margin product with another good margin product. Which is much better than anyone else in the industry can say;



    4. All the industry declined, which means Apple declined as well. I say we're still to see the bottom of the market.



    5. These are all "guesses", which could be wrong. But I doubt it, the general premisse sounds credible (less people wanting pcs, more market share going to netbooks, apple maintaining share).







    The showdown of 2009 will be tied first to the iPhone. It's new 3.0 OS is incredible, and if they add video editing and direct upload to youtube (and others), it's another small revolution. It will also be tied to the OS 10.6. If SL really gets the overall experience better, faster and more powerful, it will be interesting to watch its fight with windows seven.



  • Reply 87 of 168
    kennmsrkennmsr Posts: 100member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bodypainter View Post


    sorry, but i can not believe that apple really wants to have market share. why not? well, if they REALLY would like to have market share, they'd have to put the price tag of the mac mini to seducing 349 US$, or the mac book price tag to 699 US$.



    i fear that apple is actually more interested in generating money, and with a cheap product you can't.



    These market share numbers are nothing but a marketing Ponzie Scheme where manufacturers manufacture such junk computers that the manufacturer keeps selling to the same buyer year after year. Where most of my customers only buy new Macs every 7 + years.

    Real market share numbers would show machines in use not purchased. So if the average Mac's life is 5 years and the Cheap PC's 1 year and there are 5 Mac Customers who buy a new Mac CustA 1 in year 1 and CustB 1 in year 2 etc every year until year 6 When CustA replaces his 5 year old Mac with a new one and year 7 CustB does the same etc. But with the same scenario in the PC world and yearly replacments by year 5 there would be market share numbers Mac 16% and PC's 84% where in reality Mac ownership would be 50% equal to PC ownership in Year 5. So the longer your machine remains usable the lower your market share would appear. Some Cheap PC's can't even outlive the Government's depreciation schedule.
  • Reply 88 of 168
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by KennMSr View Post


    These market share numbers are nothing but a marketing Ponzie Scheme where manufacturers manufacture such junk computers that the manufacturer keeps selling to the same buyer year after year. Where most of my customers only buy new Macs every 7 + years.

    Real market share numbers would show machines in use not purchased. So if the average Mac's life is 5 years and the Cheap PC's 1 year and there are 5 Mac Customers who buy a new Mac CustA 1 in year 1 and CustB 1 in year 2 etc every year until year 6 When CustA replaces his 5 year old Mac with a new one and year 7 CustB does the same etc. But with the same scenario in the PC world and yearly replacments by year 5 there would be market share numbers Mac 16% and PC's 84% where in reality Mac ownership would be 50% equal to PC ownership in Year 5. So the longer your machine remains usable the lower your market share would appear. Some Cheap PC's can't even outlive the Government's depreciation schedule.



    A reasonable view.
  • Reply 89 of 168
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Urgon View Post


    Apple will have to get into this market somehow, and soon.



    No they won't.



    The profit on a $599 iPhone is > $300

    The profit on a $299 netbook is < $50.



    Best guess is that one iPhone = 6 netbooks.

    So why exactly should Apple get into this market?



    Netbooks are selling big units. But no one is making any money on them.



    C.
  • Reply 90 of 168
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by LuisDias View Post


    Really? All that inside a 6GB hard drive? Impressive. Because hey, we all know that if it has enough space to contain iTunes, it must also have enough space to contain music, movies and the likes, yes? And games too, of course. I can easily imagine someone having thousands of musics, videos, while surfing the net and playing the immense choice one has with windows game titles...



    Come on, turn on your brain. I've got an old laptop with a 120GB hard disk and if I hadn't an external 500GB disk I'd be dead in the water. There are a lot of other people out there that don't necessarily work exclusively in "office", you know?











    Listen, if all you do is chat on MSMessenger and on apple websites, while pretending to make a homework paper in MS Word, then yes, you have a point. Otherwise, you don't. Video editing is impossible by definition for you don't have enough space to do it. You don't have enough space to put your music library, and forget about games. Mostly, you'll have space for the OS, for Office, and all the other programs you'll choose, for all the word documents, and one game or two (small). That's it.





    But to make things even clearer, consider this. The iPhone has 16 GB, and the iPod Touch 32GB. It has a smaller screen, but here you are, you can make docs, you can make spreadsheets, you can surf the net and it's way way more mobile and cool.



    If a netbook is a "pc", how come then these two aren't? Where to draw the line then?



    What are you talking about? Go check the original toilet seated iBook's spec for a laugh then. 6GB hard drive indeed.
  • Reply 91 of 168
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Carniphage View Post


    No they won't.



    The profit on a $599 iPhone is > $300

    The profit on a $299 netbook is < $50.



    Best guess is that one iPhone = 6 netbooks.

    So why exactly should Apple get into this market?



    Netbooks are selling big units. But no one is making any money on them.



    C.



    Wrong- Microsoft is.
  • Reply 92 of 168
    Yesterday, I bought a new Mac: it's called a Dell mini 9. I think I am going to call it Dellmac. It runs MacOs X 10.5.6 impecably.



    It costed me ?100 (about 80 dollars) in Vodafone Portugal, plus an 18 month 3G connection per ?22 a month (3,6 Mbs with unlimited downloads 8 hours a day).



    Boy, my new Macbook is going to rest for a while!
  • Reply 93 of 168
    bsenkabsenka Posts: 799member
    Some of the posters here that think that netbooks are not "real" computers obviously have not been shopping for them.



    The MSI Wind, probably the most popular netbook (especially for those who want to run OS X), has a 1.6Ghz processor, 160Gb hard drive and 2Gb of RAM. There are a lot of people out there doing real work on full sized computers with lesser specs. It's certainly NOT analagous to an iPhone. It's a small, low powered, fully functioning computer.
  • Reply 94 of 168
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kresh View Post


    I think you are intentionally misconstruing my words. We are talking market share which by definition is the amount sold, hence market - an area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted . This metric measures the quantity sold not installed.



    The originators of this report have decided what is included and the iPod touch is not included in this report but the netbooks are. This is the only point I am arguing which is that netbooks should not be in this metric.



    The PC market share category should be for personal computers and should not include any device that is not a PC. To include netbooks is highly disingenuous. It does not tell the story of cannibalization. Is it really good news that a company is selling more widgets, but the new widgets only generate 50% of the gross income of the widget they replaced. Hey it is great news. We've added 25% more support requirements, warranty obligations but we've made a lot less money. It just seems suspect to add netbooks as it hides something important.



    As to the straw man you keep building, I merely acknowledged that some people include the iPod Touch in the installed OS numbers. When AI has an article discussing the os installed base I will be happy to argue that point with you.



    I'm not misconstruing anything- all I'm saying is you can't have it both ways. There once were laptops (Apple's included) with less power than some current netbooks. An iPod touch or iPhone is not running Leopard - they run a mibile iPhone OS2.0. If they were included then you would have to include all the Microsoft Mobile phones- would you want that?

    And yes there have been prior threads regarding OS percentages at AI which includes what we mentioned..
  • Reply 95 of 168
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by justflybob View Post


    OMG! You're the guy in the E*TRADE ad!



    You know.... the one that almost has an orgasm because he bought stocks in [gasp!] Hong Kong?



    Or maybe that little kid that throws up in the ad?
  • Reply 96 of 168
    piotpiot Posts: 1,346member
    Poor headline and pretty misleading story from Appleinsider. Looks more like a ZDNet blog post.



    You seem to just be looking at these figures as some kind of league table and missing the real information. There is also some pretty interesting detail in the actual reports but you have chosen to ignore it.



    Finally (perhaps in error) you have failed to publish the IDC figures (which completely change the complexion of the stats) in the forum post.



    Those figures can be found on the front page story:

    apples_share_of_u_s_pc_market_slips_to_7_4_as_sale s_decline
  • Reply 97 of 168
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bsenka View Post


    Some of the posters here that think that netbooks are not "real" computers obviously have not been shopping for them.



    Well would you really expect Apple fanboyz to shop outside the Apple store?
  • Reply 98 of 168
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Carniphage View Post


    This is a dumb story.

    Market share should be measured in dollars spent - not in units shipped.



    Unrelated to the thread, but a pet peeve of mine, I wish that movie sales were measured in the number of ticket sales, like in countries outside the US.
  • Reply 99 of 168
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mheidegger View Post


    Yesterday, I bought a new Mac: it's called a Dell mini 9. I think I am going to call it Dellmac. It runs MacOs X 10.5.6 impecably.



    It costed me €100 (about 80 dollars) in Vodafone Portugal, plus an 18 month 3G connection per €22 a month (3,6 Mbs with unlimited downloads 8 hours a day).



    Boy, my new Macbook is going to rest for a while!



    You hit the nail on the head. I would buy a new ultra-portable laptop today, right now, with OSX running on it if it was small.

    A Sony TT with its matte hybrid screen , HDMI, & firewire would be awesome with OSX.
  • Reply 100 of 168
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bsenka View Post


    Some of the posters here that think that netbooks are not "real" computers obviously have not been shopping for them.



    They certainly are real computers, but they have severe limitations that prevent them from being netbook replacements.



    Quote:

    The MSI Wind, probably the most popular netbook (especially for those who want to run OS X), has a 1.6Ghz processor...



    Hold up, saying that it has a 1.6GHz CPU is pretty pointless as the MBA has a 1.6GHz CPU, too. If you aren't stating that it's an Atom CPU you are being disingenuous. That CPU can't even handle smooth playing of Hulu TV Shows in their higher-res 480p option.



    Quote:

    There are a lot of people out there doing real work on full sized computers with lesser specs. It's certainly NOT analagous to an iPhone. It's a small, low powered, fully functioning computer.



    The only specs that may be lesser are the RAM amount and speed, and/or the HDD capacity, but that doesn't mean that they have less computing power. You'd have to go back pretty far to find a notebook that can't out perform an Atom. But more importantly, there are physical restrictions that make any netbook less than ideal for most PC users as their main system. The main ones are the keyboard size and the screen size. The smaller ones are the screen resolution, backlighting, the quality of he keys. For many of the same reasons that consumers prefer PCs that don't cost $400 when the cheap budget machines are technically useable, people will nor prefer netbooks. In fact, you get a whole lot more computer for the money with a $400 notebook from Dell or HP. You can actually get a C2D CPU and high resolution display.



    I like to compare a netbook to a portable TV. It can connect to cable or sat. You can even hook up a DVD player and whatnot. It can technically do every basic thing that a large, quality TV can do for a fraction of the price, except offer the same user experience. That is what a netbook is.



    Disclosure: I have both an MSI Wind and an Acer Aspire One. The Wind I bought with the sole purpose of installing OSx86 to use when roughing it at times or when traveling to countries where theft is high as I would care about my $1600 MB more than a $300 netbook. The Aspire I bought as a remedy as a temp stand in when I was without any notebook for a few weeks. My iPhone is great, but it's not a notebook replacement when used as your sole device. OS X was not installed as their are no WiFi KEXT for it.
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