You mean like telling people if they liked their healthcare plan they could keep it?
Or like telling people they are being robbed of their existing healthcare plan, when really their existing healthcare plans were robbing them.
Individual healthcare plans being taken off the market were all phony crap that allowed insurance companies to defraud their own customers, and the point of ObamaCare was to stop this from happening. Being able to "keep your plan if you like it" assumed that critics of reform wouldn’t jump on the tiny fraction of terrible plans being replaced with better ones that had some actual value, and attempt to make this into their primary campaign slogan.
Architects of the ACA (and I mean the Obama administration, not the Republicans who originally wrote it) probably shouldn’t have assumed their opponents would stoop so low to spread toxic lies, given that they previously campaigned on the notion that the ACA was designed to kill old people using "death panels."
But good example of how to lie and make it look like you are exposing a lie. That’s what market researchers often do.
That's why market share studies are useless when only Apple reports actual numbers. Usage share has less bias if they span a wide variety of sites/apps/etc.
Apple growth did stop in a growing market. Unit sales rose a bit in 2013, but profits went down. We can discuss that Apple is a premium brand all day long to try to justify it, but fact is Apple market shares are going down.
Apple clearly made a stand with the late 2013 refreshes, it position itself at the high end with high prices. I expect Apple market shares to rise a bit for 6 months because they did release great products, but after that market share will fall again when Apple sales get overwhelm by the high volume of lower prices devices.
I love DED's editorials. But alas, his quixotic jabs at the "bad guys" seem rather futile. Will any of those "windmills" ever fall to his "lance"? Unlikely.
The wind which drives those windmills and which therefore justifies their existence is the public's penchant to believe what they read, or to at least be influenced by it. If there are indeed sheep, THOSE are the bleating hordes whose irrational aversion to Apple drives them to seek non-Californian fodder.
Fair enough. All the more "Designed in California" great Apple products for The Rest of Us, as has always been the case.
But don't lose heart, Sir Daniel, keep up the good fight. After all, IDEAS are the bullets which can eventually penetrate the toughest armor.
You mean like telling people if they liked their healthcare plan they could keep it?
Or like telling people they are being robbed of their existing healthcare plan, when really their existing healthcare plans were robbing them.
Individual healthcare plans being taken off the market were all phony crap that allowed insurance companies to defraud their own customers, and the point of ObamaCare was to stop this from happening. Being able to "keep your plan if you like it" assumed that critics of reform wouldn’t jump on the tiny fraction of terrible plans being replaced with better ones that had some actual value, and attempt to make this into their primary campaign slogan.
Architects of the ACA (and I mean the Obama administration, not the Republicans who originally wrote it) probably shouldn’t have assumed their opponents would stoop so low to spread toxic lies, given that they previously campaigned on the notion that the ACA was designed to kill old people using "death panels."
But good example of how to lie and make it look like you are exposing a lie. That’s what market researchers often do.
DED/Corrections is on my ignore list... but I read this one...
I reported it to AI as "Offensive"
"Author of AI Article using a pseudonym to insult and demean a poster with whom he disagrees!."
I have a Mini and I love it, but I wouldn't pay $600 for a home server. Those are commodities satisfied by much cheaper hardware. Macs are well worth paying for when you're using them as Macs - with the full GUI OS X experience.
I have a Mini and I love it, but I wouldn't pay $600 for a home server. Those are commodities satisfied by much cheaper hardware. Macs are well worth paying for when you're using them as Macs - with the full GUI OS X experience.
It depends on what you use it for. You could make a cheaper headless iTunes server running Windows but it can't work for Time Machine backups. You could buy a NAS that supports backing up to Time Machine but I seem to recall there are some limitations with those not found with a Mac. I personally like the ease of it all using a Mac but you don't need a new Mac Mini for this. You could buy a used one for the price of a netbook that can do it just fine since it has to do so little processing. If you connect it to your router via Ethernet you're really in good shape. I use a a really old PPC Mac for my iTunes Server and it's perfectly fine.
I am afraid however that all this negative coverage is having its desired effect.
Is the cart really leading the horse?
With so many form factors and overlapping categories, I don't think anyone's ever going to agree on a single method for counting devices. But given what data there is, could it be that the market share numbers being reported simply have some relationship to market share?
Does market share even matter enough to argue about it?
Seems to me all technologies follow the same pattern: any first-mover advantage is short-lived once the inevitable commoditization begins.
Historically Apple has used this to its advantage: the iPod changed the game, and just about the time any competitor could put out anything along those lines Apple made that whole category of products obsolete by adding a phone with it.
So today we have the iPad, but I don't think Apple has reached the end of their game. If their history is any indicator, within a year or two we'll see a new form factor that'll make tablets obsolete.
This article really needed to be written - I kept seeing such prognostications and wondered, "How in the freakin' WORLD can this be right - none of this appears to be based on anything remotely connected with the real world".
Then it struck me - these reviews and reports are essentially the same thing as the MSNBC / FOXNews misinformation and disinformation that gets spewed forth every day. As has been said, "There are lies, damned lies, and then's there're STATISTICS".
The monied interests - who are the identified clients of these reporting agencies - have big skin in the game - they are are playing on the adage, "Buy on the rumor, sell on the news". If they can promote a PERCEPTION that Apple is on the way out, then they CAN affect the markets. "Perception is reality", as the phrase goes and their mission is to create a negative perception about Apple. What's surprising about that?
Yes - the Apple products cost more than their counterparts - which brings us to yet another platitude, "You get what you pay for". So - OK - complain that Apple sells big despite their high price - but where's the sin in that? With Apple, my impression is that you always get what you expect - plus a little more that you did NOT expect.
Then - consider the source. For instance, John C. Dvorak is a self-proclaimed contrarian who, each day, faces his main challenge, "How do I manage to keep John C. Dvorak appearing to relevant?" Delivering pretzel logic prognostications on the impending doom of Apple is just one of the tools in his utility-belt.
I say show me the lines of people waiting for days in line on New York City, in London and Beijing to be the first on their block to get the new "Samsung 6" and I'll try and pay some more attention to your predictions of the impending doom of Apple.
Obviously, I wouldn't expect Wall Street or any business analyst to ignore any part of the market. But what is absurd is to claim that Apple is failing for not bothering to address a part of the market that consumes many units, but doesn't make much in the way of profit. And if Apple did do that, Wall Street would probably complain that they're losing focus. It's the difference between a fine restaurant and McDonald's. Which business does one want to be in? From a Wall Street perspective, they'd look at "hamburger shipments" and choose McDonald's. Anyone who cared about quality would choose the fine restaurant.
We're seeing this right now in the photography market (partially because of Apple actually): The low-end point-and-shoot market is disappearing even though that's where all the units were. It's disappearing because smartphones can do just about everything the low end p&s cameras can do, much that they can't (like instant posting to photos sites or Facebook, etc.) and because the best camera to have is the one you have with you and people always have their phones with them. Through September, shipments of p&s cameras are down 44% this year and actual sales have probably declined even more. (Not that higher-end cameras aren't doing well either: DSLRs are down 17% and Mirrorless are down 13%). A number of camera makers are either getting out of the p&s business completely or are de-emphasizing it. Do you want to see Apple in that position in a few years?
The problem with playing at the low end of the market, aside from the lack of profits there, is that it's too easy for someone else to compete with you, since the resulting product will have fewer features or lesser performance. I don't care what Apple's market share is - they're very smart for not trying to play in that space. The only advantage to playing in that market is to build brand loyalty, although I wonder if even that would happen if the resulting low-end product doesn't have differentiation.
Thanks for a super response, and I think your restaurant analogy is a pretty good one. Apple invented the premium steak burger and people loved it and their steak houses started springing up everywhere. Competition entered the market and Samsung started building steak houses too. Many people simply couldn't afford the quality steak burgers so Samsung started building McDonald's quality burgers as well and that business started booming as well. Apple doesn't do low grade burgers.
The current state is premium steak houses are still there and doing well, but more and more of them are not opening up. The market that can afford them is pretty well saturated. There might still be some growth left, but it is probably single digit growth if that. There will still be some fighting in that segment and it should be noted in terms of the analogy Apple steak houses are doing better than Samsung steak houses. Samsung has basically said, our steak house business is doing well, but we don't expect it to grow any more. Apple meanwhile still managed and impressive 27% growth.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has gotten a taste of Samsung's McD' burgers and loves them. Lots of growth is expected. They might only make $1 profit a burger but they are selling tons of them. So much so that barring a major new development Samsungs profits from selling 'burgers' is likely to surpass Apple's either this year or next.
So what?
If you like Apple steak burgers, they aren't going anywhere any time soon and you can continue to enjoy them. They may even continue to put the hurt on Samsung's steak houses (especially if they offer the 'bigger' portions that many that buy Samsung enjoy).
Was Apple right not to enter the lower end market? The only one that knows that answer is time. Maybe all the people eating the low end burgers will crave the day they can afford to eat at the steak house. If Apple can maintain that their steak burgers are a cut above maybe the strategy will work out well.
DED is basically saying you can't count the fast burgers in the steak burgers. If all you want to look at is the steak houses, he's right.
If you happen to care about money, then looking at the whole market probably isn't a bad idea. Much of the world can't afford steak and never will be able to.
I prefer a nice juicy steak over a McD burger myself, but show me a steak house chain that has McDonalds' revenue.
Something else happened in 2010: iPad, a highly mobile personal computer with a tablet form factor. Shortly after it went on sale, Gartner and IDC stopped counting tablets as Personal Computers. Well not exactly; they stopped counting tabletsthat didn't run Windows as Personal Computers.
This prevented Apple from distorting their PC market share figures. As the PC market mysteriously flattened out (it failed to grow by more than 2 million units between 2010 and 2012, a pace more than twice as slow as that seen during the recession of 2008), Apple's iPad sales quickly ramped up to 58.3 million per year.
That's because its not a pc, why report on it as if its a pc when its not. very simple reason.
You show me your definition of a pc, i.e. "personal computer" -- and I'll show you mine!
For starters:
Here's a Michael Cioni video from 2012. Michael is a pioneer in using technology for digital "filmmaking". The entire video is a great view!
The definition of what he is about starts at 01:51, through 4:29...
It depends on what you use it for. You could make a cheaper headless iTunes server running Windows but it can't work for Time Machine backups.
Excuse me while I puke. Sorry, but the thought of having Windows in my home makes me queasy. For servers I stick with the Unix-like family, OS X's distant relative, Linux. Friends don't let friends use Windows.
It's hard not to agree with the idea behind the article. In fact, I challenge anyone to do so.
My only problem with it, is that the author is again trying to step over the line and start: "trash" this, "junk" that.
It isn't appropriate just like it isn't correct. Samsung has tremendous power on the smartphone platform, mostly in part because Google makes such a fantastic OS that no matter how samsung tries to **** things up, it still is bearable even if the knowledge of the user is limited.
Just install Nova and G-apps like: Hangouts, play music, google now, play books, youtube, chrome, gmail and deactivate the Samsung equivalents.
Like it or not, samsung is teaching something to Apple, here: There's room for choice and growth on the high end, just make another iPhone line with the big screen. Unfortunately, I have to agree that the medium to low end does not deserve Apple's attention, but they are making a mistake with the "no choice" iPhone, and that's the only reason for less growth than most OEMs.
Sorry for this off-topic bit, but I did it to say this:
The same is happening to tablets. Only a completely ignorant would call a cheap tablet (like the nexus 7 and similar tablets that are starting to show up) crap. Fortunately, Apple did the right thing and already offers choice. But a bigger iPad should come, too. I know lots of users that would love it, especially since a 12" iPad pro (similar to the Air) would weight the same or less than the iPad 4.
Thanks for the article, Daniel.
Why are you ignoring $49 tablets and phones?
The examples you choose are such a small part of the market, they are irrelevant.
You demonstrate well the trap these analysts want people to fall into, hence their "Influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences" claims.
Now I wonder if the in dash touchscreen in my car is also counted as one of these mysterious, magically appearing ten million tablets?
Apple growth did stop in a growing market. Unit sales rose a bit in 2013, but profits went down. We can discuss that Apple is a premium brand all day long to try to justify it, but fact is Apple market shares are going down.
Apple clearly made a stand with the late 2013 refreshes, it position itself at the high end with high prices. I expect Apple market shares to rise a bit for 6 months because they did release great products, but after that market share will fall again when Apple sales get overwhelm by the high volume of lower prices devices.
As for unit share, 2012 had the iPad 3 in April. 2013 had no such new product. Market share will decline because one company can't grow as fast as the overall market if including these cheap tabs?
does BMW get lumped into the entire vehicle market? Or do they just talk about them in the luxury/premium market? Ford and GM are selling tons of pickup trucks, BMW should make one too to keep up its growth.
I don't know why people are so hung up on market share. Apple seems to sell quite a bit of h/w and retain lots of margins and seems to have their stores packed with people most of the time, especially when there is a product announcement. They seem to always have more demand than production for their new releases of iPads and iPhones, so I don't know if there is much concern over sales at Apple.
And why are there more articles that talk about Android's dominance right after their worst quarter? They do this all of the time. Judging what's going on in the industry based on last quarter is kind of dumb. It's right after the Android platform has released their products, but it's right before Apple's announcements. I would much rather see them do this at the end of the December quarter and let Apple have a least one full quarter worth of sales, knowing it takes about2 quarters for Apple to roll out their products in all of their markets.
That 2% figure was always suspect. It was sales, not installed base. Macs last longer and don't need to be upgraded or replaced as often.
manxman is right about the consumer market being different from professionals. I work in printing. Even when the Mac was supposedly at 2% market share, 90% of the files people sent in for print jobs were Mac files. These days, it's more like 99%. We have one lonely PC that sits in a corner and gathers dust, versus six Macs, each being used 40 hours a week or more.
Sure for graphics, but I bet your RIP, color proofing, plate imager, press software, accounting and web site do not run on Macs. People who live and work in Mac centric environments sometimes forget that most business, manufacturing, banking, medical, government, military, scientific research, education and virtually every other professional field uses primarily Windows.
does BMW get lumped into the entire vehicle market? Or do they just talk about them in the luxury/premium market? Ford and GM are selling tons of pickup trucks, BMW should make one too to keep up its growth.
All the purists frowned when BMW made the X5 and X6, but I wouldn't mind seeing a BMW pickup. That would be pretty sweet. Mercedes already makes a lot of great trucks. Apple kind of disappointed me with the new Mac Pro because it was sort of a departure from heavy duty industrial strength computing platform. The deminutive new Mac Pro just doesn't look like an industrial beast like the old one.
Comments
You mean like telling people if they liked their healthcare plan they could keep it?
Or like telling people they are being robbed of their existing healthcare plan, when really their existing healthcare plans were robbing them.
Individual healthcare plans being taken off the market were all phony crap that allowed insurance companies to defraud their own customers, and the point of ObamaCare was to stop this from happening. Being able to "keep your plan if you like it" assumed that critics of reform wouldn’t jump on the tiny fraction of terrible plans being replaced with better ones that had some actual value, and attempt to make this into their primary campaign slogan.
Architects of the ACA (and I mean the Obama administration, not the Republicans who originally wrote it) probably shouldn’t have assumed their opponents would stoop so low to spread toxic lies, given that they previously campaigned on the notion that the ACA was designed to kill old people using "death panels."
But good example of how to lie and make it look like you are exposing a lie. That’s what market researchers often do.
Real Macs start over 900$.
That useless pice of crap, the mini, at 600$. I bet it will sell less than the 3000+ $ Mac Pro.
"Real Mac" = category made-up to win some forum argument.
That's why market share studies are useless when only Apple reports actual numbers. Usage share has less bias if they span a wide variety of sites/apps/etc.
Apple growth did stop in a growing market. Unit sales rose a bit in 2013, but profits went down. We can discuss that Apple is a premium brand all day long to try to justify it, but fact is Apple market shares are going down.
Apple clearly made a stand with the late 2013 refreshes, it position itself at the high end with high prices. I expect Apple market shares to rise a bit for 6 months because they did release great products, but after that market share will fall again when Apple sales get overwhelm by the high volume of lower prices devices.
I love DED's editorials. But alas, his quixotic jabs at the "bad guys" seem rather futile. Will any of those "windmills" ever fall to his "lance"? Unlikely.
The wind which drives those windmills and which therefore justifies their existence is the public's penchant to believe what they read, or to at least be influenced by it. If there are indeed sheep, THOSE are the bleating hordes whose irrational aversion to Apple drives them to seek non-Californian fodder.
Fair enough. All the more "Designed in California" great Apple products for The Rest of Us, as has always been the case.
But don't lose heart, Sir Daniel, keep up the good fight. After all, IDEAS are the bullets which can eventually penetrate the toughest armor.
DED/Corrections is on my ignore list... but I read this one...
I reported it to AI as "Offensive"
"Author of AI Article using a pseudonym to insult and demean a poster with whom he disagrees!."
Headless home servers, server farms...
I have a Mini and I love it, but I wouldn't pay $600 for a home server. Those are commodities satisfied by much cheaper hardware. Macs are well worth paying for when you're using them as Macs - with the full GUI OS X experience.
It depends on what you use it for. You could make a cheaper headless iTunes server running Windows but it can't work for Time Machine backups. You could buy a NAS that supports backing up to Time Machine but I seem to recall there are some limitations with those not found with a Mac. I personally like the ease of it all using a Mac but you don't need a new Mac Mini for this. You could buy a used one for the price of a netbook that can do it just fine since it has to do so little processing. If you connect it to your router via Ethernet you're really in good shape. I use a a really old PPC Mac for my iTunes Server and it's perfectly fine.
I am afraid however that all this negative coverage is having its desired effect.
Is the cart really leading the horse?
With so many form factors and overlapping categories, I don't think anyone's ever going to agree on a single method for counting devices. But given what data there is, could it be that the market share numbers being reported simply have some relationship to market share?
Does market share even matter enough to argue about it?
Seems to me all technologies follow the same pattern: any first-mover advantage is short-lived once the inevitable commoditization begins.
Historically Apple has used this to its advantage: the iPod changed the game, and just about the time any competitor could put out anything along those lines Apple made that whole category of products obsolete by adding a phone with it.
So today we have the iPad, but I don't think Apple has reached the end of their game. If their history is any indicator, within a year or two we'll see a new form factor that'll make tablets obsolete.
"How in the freakin' WORLD can this be right - none of this appears to be based on anything remotely connected with the real world".
Then it struck me - these reviews and reports are essentially the same thing as the MSNBC / FOXNews misinformation and disinformation that gets spewed forth every day. As has been said, "There are lies, damned lies, and then's there're STATISTICS".
The monied interests - who are the identified clients of these reporting agencies - have big skin in the game - they are are playing on the adage, "Buy on the rumor, sell on the news". If they can promote a PERCEPTION that Apple is on the way out, then they CAN affect the markets. "Perception is reality", as the phrase goes and their mission is to create a negative perception about Apple. What's surprising about that?
Yes - the Apple products cost more than their counterparts - which brings us to yet another platitude, "You get what you pay for". So - OK - complain that Apple sells big despite their high price - but where's the sin in that? With Apple, my impression is that you always get what you expect - plus a little more that you did NOT expect.
Then - consider the source. For instance, John C. Dvorak is a self-proclaimed contrarian who, each day, faces his main challenge, "How do I manage to keep John C. Dvorak appearing to relevant?" Delivering pretzel logic prognostications on the impending doom of Apple is just one of the tools in his utility-belt.
I say show me the lines of people waiting for days in line on New York City, in London and Beijing to be the first on their block to get the new "Samsung 6" and I'll try and pay some more attention to your predictions of the impending doom of Apple.
Obviously, I wouldn't expect Wall Street or any business analyst to ignore any part of the market. But what is absurd is to claim that Apple is failing for not bothering to address a part of the market that consumes many units, but doesn't make much in the way of profit. And if Apple did do that, Wall Street would probably complain that they're losing focus. It's the difference between a fine restaurant and McDonald's. Which business does one want to be in? From a Wall Street perspective, they'd look at "hamburger shipments" and choose McDonald's. Anyone who cared about quality would choose the fine restaurant.
We're seeing this right now in the photography market (partially because of Apple actually): The low-end point-and-shoot market is disappearing even though that's where all the units were. It's disappearing because smartphones can do just about everything the low end p&s cameras can do, much that they can't (like instant posting to photos sites or Facebook, etc.) and because the best camera to have is the one you have with you and people always have their phones with them. Through September, shipments of p&s cameras are down 44% this year and actual sales have probably declined even more. (Not that higher-end cameras aren't doing well either: DSLRs are down 17% and Mirrorless are down 13%). A number of camera makers are either getting out of the p&s business completely or are de-emphasizing it. Do you want to see Apple in that position in a few years?
The problem with playing at the low end of the market, aside from the lack of profits there, is that it's too easy for someone else to compete with you, since the resulting product will have fewer features or lesser performance. I don't care what Apple's market share is - they're very smart for not trying to play in that space. The only advantage to playing in that market is to build brand loyalty, although I wonder if even that would happen if the resulting low-end product doesn't have differentiation.
Thanks for a super response, and I think your restaurant analogy is a pretty good one. Apple invented the premium steak burger and people loved it and their steak houses started springing up everywhere. Competition entered the market and Samsung started building steak houses too. Many people simply couldn't afford the quality steak burgers so Samsung started building McDonald's quality burgers as well and that business started booming as well. Apple doesn't do low grade burgers.
The current state is premium steak houses are still there and doing well, but more and more of them are not opening up. The market that can afford them is pretty well saturated. There might still be some growth left, but it is probably single digit growth if that. There will still be some fighting in that segment and it should be noted in terms of the analogy Apple steak houses are doing better than Samsung steak houses. Samsung has basically said, our steak house business is doing well, but we don't expect it to grow any more. Apple meanwhile still managed and impressive 27% growth.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has gotten a taste of Samsung's McD' burgers and loves them. Lots of growth is expected. They might only make $1 profit a burger but they are selling tons of them. So much so that barring a major new development Samsungs profits from selling 'burgers' is likely to surpass Apple's either this year or next.
So what?
If you like Apple steak burgers, they aren't going anywhere any time soon and you can continue to enjoy them. They may even continue to put the hurt on Samsung's steak houses (especially if they offer the 'bigger' portions that many that buy Samsung enjoy).
Was Apple right not to enter the lower end market? The only one that knows that answer is time. Maybe all the people eating the low end burgers will crave the day they can afford to eat at the steak house. If Apple can maintain that their steak burgers are a cut above maybe the strategy will work out well.
DED is basically saying you can't count the fast burgers in the steak burgers. If all you want to look at is the steak houses, he's right.
If you happen to care about money, then looking at the whole market probably isn't a bad idea. Much of the world can't afford steak and never will be able to.
I prefer a nice juicy steak over a McD burger myself, but show me a steak house chain that has McDonalds' revenue.
1) Why is John C. Dvorak always so negative about Apple???
2) Why had he such a 'big reputation' on the computer media?
Good Article!
You show me your definition of a pc, i.e. "personal computer" -- and I'll show you mine!
For starters:
Here's a Michael Cioni video from 2012. Michael is a pioneer in using technology for digital "filmmaking". The entire video is a great view!
The definition of what he is about starts at 01:51, through 4:29...
The demo starts at 15:18...
[VIDEO]
It depends on what you use it for. You could make a cheaper headless iTunes server running Windows but it can't work for Time Machine backups.
Excuse me while I puke.
Sorry, but the thought of having Windows in my home makes me queasy. For servers I stick with the Unix-like family, OS X's distant relative, Linux. Friends don't let friends use Windows.
It's hard not to agree with the idea behind the article. In fact, I challenge anyone to do so.
My only problem with it, is that the author is again trying to step over the line and start: "trash" this, "junk" that.
It isn't appropriate just like it isn't correct. Samsung has tremendous power on the smartphone platform, mostly in part because Google makes such a fantastic OS that no matter how samsung tries to **** things up, it still is bearable even if the knowledge of the user is limited.
Just install Nova and G-apps like: Hangouts, play music, google now, play books, youtube, chrome, gmail and deactivate the Samsung equivalents.
Like it or not, samsung is teaching something to Apple, here: There's room for choice and growth on the high end, just make another iPhone line with the big screen. Unfortunately, I have to agree that the medium to low end does not deserve Apple's attention, but they are making a mistake with the "no choice" iPhone, and that's the only reason for less growth than most OEMs.
Sorry for this off-topic bit, but I did it to say this:
The same is happening to tablets. Only a completely ignorant would call a cheap tablet (like the nexus 7 and similar tablets that are starting to show up) crap. Fortunately, Apple did the right thing and already offers choice. But a bigger iPad should come, too. I know lots of users that would love it, especially since a 12" iPad pro (similar to the Air) would weight the same or less than the iPad 4.
Thanks for the article, Daniel.
Why are you ignoring $49 tablets and phones?
The examples you choose are such a small part of the market, they are irrelevant.
You demonstrate well the trap these analysts want people to fall into, hence their "Influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences" claims.
Now I wonder if the in dash touchscreen in my car is also counted as one of these mysterious, magically appearing ten million tablets?
strange little article...
Oh, come on! Is that the best you can do?
As for unit share, 2012 had the iPad 3 in April. 2013 had no such new product. Market share will decline because one company can't grow as fast as the overall market if including these cheap tabs?
does BMW get lumped into the entire vehicle market? Or do they just talk about them in the luxury/premium market? Ford and GM are selling tons of pickup trucks, BMW should make one too to keep up its growth.
And why are there more articles that talk about Android's dominance right after their worst quarter? They do this all of the time. Judging what's going on in the industry based on last quarter is kind of dumb. It's right after the Android platform has released their products, but it's right before Apple's announcements. I would much rather see them do this at the end of the December quarter and let Apple have a least one full quarter worth of sales, knowing it takes about2 quarters for Apple to roll out their products in all of their markets.
That 2% figure was always suspect. It was sales, not installed base. Macs last longer and don't need to be upgraded or replaced as often.
manxman is right about the consumer market being different from professionals. I work in printing. Even when the Mac was supposedly at 2% market share, 90% of the files people sent in for print jobs were Mac files. These days, it's more like 99%. We have one lonely PC that sits in a corner and gathers dust, versus six Macs, each being used 40 hours a week or more.
Sure for graphics, but I bet your RIP, color proofing, plate imager, press software, accounting and web site do not run on Macs. People who live and work in Mac centric environments sometimes forget that most business, manufacturing, banking, medical, government, military, scientific research, education and virtually every other professional field uses primarily Windows.
All the purists frowned when BMW made the X5 and X6, but I wouldn't mind seeing a BMW pickup. That would be pretty sweet. Mercedes already makes a lot of great trucks. Apple kind of disappointed me with the new Mac Pro because it was sort of a departure from heavy duty industrial strength computing platform. The deminutive new Mac Pro just doesn't look like an industrial beast like the old one.