The curious case of IDC, Gartner & Strategy Analytics' PC, phone & tablet data on Apple

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  • Reply 141 of 215
    I agree with your comments, but I just don't get it.
    Yes, they are trying to put Apple down, that has been clear before, and the example of Coke and Pepsi is very clear, only that it never happened. Pepsi is not that stupid.
    Consumers will not buy someone's product because someone says the competition is doomed, consumers buy smart phones and tablets based on price, style, features, quality, that's why Apple keeps selling despite what Strategy Analytics and Gartner and IDC say.

    The reason is Wall Street, the smart guys in Wall Street, the same Wall Street that put us in this mess in 2008, the same Wall Street that has screwed up over and over.

    Google needs to show something, despite its huge diversification, its only meaningful business is still search, how can analysts be so blinded by Google? Google messed up with Android, messed up even more with buying Motorola, essentially they paid 12 billion dollars for nothing, less than nothing, they bough a company with a very bad corporate culture that was on its knees. Any company that made such a bad investment would be punished by the market, not Google, look no further to see who is paying Strategy Analytics and the others for misinformation, Page and co are trying to save their ass making Android look good, when in reality, it has been a disaster for everyone involved except Samsung.
  • Reply 142 of 215
    Terrific article. Love these pieces. Great job.
  • Reply 143 of 215
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member

    I agree that the iPad belongs in the same market as the PC. This is because it is powerful enough to be general purpose enough to fill the role of a PC (with a few exceptions). A 64-bit 1.4GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and 128GB disk was a decent PC not long ago.

     

    The second point about some kind of conspiracy from the purveyors of stats is a bit harder to believe. I agree that one way to publish objective numbers, but still have them come out to favour your losing client, is to be creative with market boundaries. But it could just as easily be explained by them taking a simplistic view of things, e.g. not grouping devices together based on how general purpose they potentially are, but just on what they look like. One can imagine non technical people making that mistake.

  • Reply 144 of 215
    Yeah, that's why, HONESTLY, whenever I see a "figure" stating so and so PRODUCT is getting whatever %, I am like a yeah, WHATEVER...

    They are so UP and DOWN, every week it's a joke.

    Laters...
  • Reply 145 of 215
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Corrections View Post

     

     

    If game consoles were rapidly replacing PCs among PC gamers, it would be useful for anyone involved in the gaming industry to look at the market for (consoles and PC sales) when making decisions about platforms. Microsoft was gravely concerned about the original PlayStation eating up PC sales, for example, which launched the Xbox effort. 

     

    In general terms however, game consoles aren’t usually described as being significant to PC sales. They’re only used for games. Nobody really browses the web on a PS3, and console media consumption probably has impact on home stereo gear or Smart TVs than PCs.

     

    You can’t say that about iPad, which has replaced the conventional PC for millions of people, and served as a direct replacement for client PCs in a variety of business and education settings. It used to be that the general concept of a PC was a box with components. But iPad delivered a form factor at a cost where it became a very popular device. 

     

    Microsoft spent years trying to challenge Apple’s device with transformer notebooks, netbooks and thick x86 slates. Surface is close to iPad, but is trying to be more like an iPad/netbook hybrid, at a higher price point. It’s not working at all. Google entered tablets with Honeycomb slates with 16:9 screens and a 3D interface that layered on "Droid" complexity and brought back lots of old PC cruft via Android. Flopped miserably. It’s now trending closer to iPad-like devices, but still isn’t making any headway. 

     

    Its not useful to call everything a PC, but iPads are clearly being used for tasks conventional PCs were previously bought for. That makes your arbitrary distinction of PC = "separate keyboard and pointing device" incorrect, or more precisely: not useful. PC makers have sold Tablet PCs without keyboards, just not in significant quantity.

     

    And of course, DOS PCs lacked pointers from 1981 to 1995, 14 years. Nearly as long as Windows PCs have been around. 


    Cars replaced horses so should horses still be included in car market share figures? DVD players replaced VCR's should they have been considered the same product?

     

    So what about smartphones? Phones have been replacing pc's for online shopping in a far bigger way than iPads have affected business or education. Most people building sites now talk about mobile first strategies. So smartphones should be included right? Under your logic about replacing the pc, a smartphone does, so market shares for pc's should include smartphones.

     

    Also is there actually that much evidence tablets are replacing pcs rather than being an additional item. We've got a few tablets in our house, but we still use a pc for stuff too. Almost everyone in my office has a tablet, some use them for work, but everyone still also uses a pc.

     

    In a work environment tablets have had a massive impact on the way people take notes. Some people that used to use a pen and paper now use a tablet. So should iPads be included in market share figures for notepads?

  • Reply 146 of 215
    foadfoad Posts: 717member

    Ultimately, until every manufacturer that is being compared to Apple starts reporting actual sales figures like Apple does, all of these research papers from IDC, Gartner, et al., are pointless.  The margin of error and the amount of assumptions made are too high.  Additionally, as mentioned in the article, there is a substantial amount of bias.  With all those factors in play, it's tough to get any actual insight into the market.  What I do know is that I see far more iPads than I do tablets from any other manufacturer.

  • Reply 147 of 215

    AI - Great article! Do people still believe in Gartners and IDCs? They will dance to whatever tune you want - It's your dime! The real sad part is that we have people at Marketwatch, CNBC, CNET, WSJ, etc. will pick up those figures and will plaster it all over their headline board! The market and those retail investors will read this and start dumping Apple share without realizing who are the players behind the story. Two days will pass by and they will look at AAPL  stocks and they will say - DHUH!

  • Reply 148 of 215
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by radster360 View Post

     

    AI - Great article! Do people still believe in Gartners and IDCs? They will dance to whatever tune you want - It's your dime! The real sad part is that we have people at Marketwatch, CNBC, CNET, WSJ, etc. will pick up those figures and will plaster it all over their headline board! The market and those retail investors will read this and start dumping Apple share without realizing who are the players behind the story. Two days will pass by and they will look at AAPL  stocks and they will say - DHUH!


     

    The thing is that all those publications that you listed and more also have a great deal of bias in their reporting.  Whether it is ad dollars or market manipulation, it isn't straight up reporting.  When you start factoring rumors about the supply chain among other things, it's just nuts.  For some reason Apple incites some of the craziest reporting that you will see...even crazier than muscle car debates that involve stickers with kids peeing on Ford and Chevy logos.

  • Reply 149 of 215
    The Androids are here, the Androids are here ...or are they?

    Yesterday, was my favourite sister's birthday ( ) and she expressed how she wanted my wife and I to take her to the Apple store to see an iPad, since we have 4 Apple retail stores within 30 minutes of our home by car. We decided to take it a step further.

    We gave her an iPad as we had done with my mother-in-law back in October. My wife had allocated the time to set up the iPad for her and get her going in the afternoon.

    She was ecstatic with her gift and my mother-in-law arrived and quickly got busy showing her how she uses it, and then competing with her for next two hours.

    As I looked around the room, I realized we had 4 iPads, 2 iPhone 5S's, an iMac 27" and a Macbook pro and not a single Android device visible.

    Yes, look out Apple your market share is dwindling, but not here.

    Please note that I am biased as is IDC, Gartner and Strategy Analytics since all of our Apple products were paid for by Apple dividends paid to us for owning Apple stock!
  • Reply 150 of 215
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by macaholic_1948 View Post



    Principle in use: Tell a lie often enough and people will believe it.

     

    yep. look at faux news

  • Reply 151 of 215
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ascii View Post

     

    I agree that the iPad belongs in the same market as the PC. This is because it is powerful enough to be general purpose enough to fill the role of a PC (with a few exceptions). A 64-bit 1.4GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and 128GB disk was a decent PC not long ago.

     

    The second point about some kind of conspiracy from the purveyors of stats is a bit harder to believe. I agree that one way to publish objective numbers, but still have them come out to favour your losing client, is to be creative with market boundaries. But it could just as easily be explained by them taking a simplistic view of things, e.g. not grouping devices together based on how general purpose they potentially are, but just on what they look like. One can imagine non technical people making that mistake.




    It isn't a conspiracy. That's putting words in DED's mouth. It is movement into new markets and servicing new customers by SA, IDC, et al.

     

    And they aren't purveyors of stats, but rather, historically, have been creators of market analysis reports that can be used by middle managers and VPs to justify virtually any decision or forecast. That's an important distinction: the products that SA and IDC create (and charge considerable sums for) are artfully crafted reports that can be used to prop up purchasing or operations decision, so that a manager or executive can better sell his/her plan to the top brass.

     

    Does Mr. Green's plan to focus the company's software development on products that will run exclusively on the Samsung Galaxy Y sound a bit, well, deluded? But, says Mr. Green, look here at page 32 in this hefty and oh-so-professional report custom-tailored for us by IDC! The Galaxy Y has prodigious market share in the mid-to-lower-range name-brand smartphone segment! And the chart shows that it has nowhere to go but up! Can't argue with that!

     

    These reports are beautiful artifices, chock-full of obfuscating industry jargon, page-long tables that appear tidy and scrupulous, and, most important of all, charts and graphs that can be read to mean anything you want them to. Art, beautiful, exceptional art, masquerading as science.

     

    Now SA, IDC, and Gartner are moving beyond their traditional reports into new products: artfully crafted press releases, designed to sway industry pundits who will assume that there must be at least a grain of truth in the releases, and who will, like the oysters they are, build fantastic pearls of wisdom around those grains. The pearls will be shared with investors, early adopters, and others who will further influence consumers. In the end, the truthiness will out.

     

    If you were a marketer at a billion-dollar company which bet on the Android horse and hasn't seen a penny of profit from it, would you consider paying a relative pittance for press releases from well-known industry analysts that appear to be impartial but which actually paint your company's struggles as triumphs and your competitor's wins as losses?

     

    There's no conspiracy here, just sleazy businesses servicing sleazy businesses.

  • Reply 152 of 215

    Haha you're name Dilger!

  • Reply 153 of 215
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member
    The best advertisement for an iPhone is having used an Android. I didnt realize the goal of the "research" was to influence purchasing behavior.
  • Reply 154 of 215
    @manxman
    "I think you are fundamentally wrong to look at macs in a general home computer market."

    completely wrong. actually couldn't be more wrong. Personally, i know more people who have a mac at home, than i know who use one at work. And i used to work for a Mac Distributor and am involved in IT support each day now, so have a fairly large stats base to work from

    i would even go so far as to say now that its Windows that is the general "work" computer
  • Reply 155 of 215
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member
    timgriff84 wrote: »
     

    If game consoles were rapidly replacing PCs among PC gamers, it would be useful for anyone involved in the gaming industry to look at the market for (consoles and PC sales) when making decisions about platforms. Microsoft was gravely concerned about the original PlayStation eating up PC sales, for example, which launched the Xbox effort. 

    In general terms however, game consoles aren’t usually described as being significant to PC sales. They’re only used for games. Nobody really browses the web on a PS3, and console media consumption probably has impact on home stereo gear or Smart TVs than PCs.

    You can’t say that about iPad, which has replaced the conventional PC for millions of people, and served as a direct replacement for client PCs in a variety of business and education settings. It used to be that the general concept of a PC was a box with components. But iPad delivered a form factor at a cost where it became a very popular device. 

    Microsoft spent years trying to challenge Apple’s device with transformer notebooks, netbooks and thick x86 slates. Surface is close to iPad, but is trying to be more like an iPad/netbook hybrid, at a higher price point. It’s not working at all. Google entered tablets with Honeycomb slates with 16:9 screens and a 3D interface that layered on "Droid" complexity and brought back lots of old PC cruft via Android. Flopped miserably. It’s now trending closer to iPad-like devices, but still isn’t making any headway. 

    <span style="line-height:1.4em;">It</span>
    ’<span style="line-height:1.4em;">s not useful to call everything a PC, but iPads are clearly being used for tasks conventional PCs were </span>
    previously<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> bought for. That makes your arbitrary distinction of PC = "</span>
    separate keyboard and pointing device" incorrect, or more precisely: not useful. PC makers have sold Tablet PCs without keyboards, just not in significant quantity.

    And of course, DOS PCs lacked pointers from 1981 to 1995, 14 years. Nearly as long as Windows PCs have been around. 
    Cars replaced horses so should horses still be included in car market share figures? DVD players replaced VCR's should they have been considered the same product?

    So what about smartphones? Phones have been replacing pc's for online shopping in a far bigger way than iPads have affected business or education. Most people building sites now talk about mobile first strategies. So smartphones should be included right? Under your logic about replacing the pc, a smartphone does, so market shares for pc's should include smartphones.

    Also is there actually that much evidence tablets are replacing pcs rather than being an additional item. We've got a few tablets in our house, but we still use a pc for stuff too. Almost everyone in my office has a tablet, some use them for work, but everyone still also uses a pc.

    In a work environment tablets have had a massive impact on the way people take notes. Some people that used to use a pen and paper now use a tablet. So should iPads be included in market share figures for notepads?

    Your analogies are inconsistent and too extreme to form a useful argument. One could extend your methodology equally in the other direction to rule out electric cars from the car market just because they don't have internal combustion engines, which is arguably a much bigger product differentiator than a computer without the old-style pointing device.

    We did not reclassify PCs as entirely new products when they transitioned from floppy drives to hard drives to SSDs, when they stopped using CRTs as displays, when the box went away and it just became a screen with a keyboard (iMac), when the mouseless laptop started to dominate (even though that mobile sales segment is still sometimes broken out), or when their primary functions changed to include entertainment (movies, music etc.).

    So just because an iPad lacks a couple of the peripherals that you are used to (or rather it has them but now built into the display) does not make it less of a PC. It still has all the key elements of a PC and, even more significantly, it is being used for the same purposes as a PC. Furthermore, it is clearly canniblelizing PC sales in significant, even if not all, market segments, including business and home use. For many purposes an iPad is a perfectly viable replacement for a regular PC. That's not really true for a smartphone - even though they include much of the same functionality they are too small to be viable replacements.
  • Reply 156 of 215
    dachar wrote: »
    The home market may be changing. I have moved from a windows desktop PC to an iMac just for home use. I became so fed up with Microsoft os and so pleased with my iPad and iPhone that when it came time to replace my computer Apple was the only choice. I now have a trouble free computer that works properly, something that I didn't have under Microsoft's os. Apple is no longer just for selected markets but for home users too.

    Same here. Back in the late '80's to early '90's, I always thought Apple was for the "rich, odd" people. Since thier market share was so low, I thought they must be crap machines that only the rich people would want just to set themselves up on a higher pedestal than the rest of the crowd. Since Windows 3.1, I've always been a Microsoft user, even though at times the devices were extremely frustrating to use. I thought, well I guess this is just how it is, you just learn to accept the fact that these devices are mid to low rate, and there's nothing you can do about it. Again, only the rich people would pay more at Apple for the same crap. When I got my first iPod, I remember thinking, "Wow! Ok, Apple's onto something here." When the iPhone came out, again, the user experience I encountered with the iPhone was out of this world! Comparing EVERY other mobile phone I had used since 1996 couldn't even be done on the same planet! Unheard of user friendliness. By now, Apple's got me hooked and I'm so fed up with Microsoft Vista and their garbage. So when the iPad hit, I GOTTA have this thing! What great products! How could I ever go back to junk? So when my Dell finally died, there was absolutely no question in my mind what I was getting to replace it. Of course, a Mac!

    Now, I'm all for competition, but when I tried using friends' Android and Windows phones and their tablets, it was like going backwards in time. Like going back to Vista. No way! They can keep that garbage.
  • Reply 157 of 215
    bullhead wrote: »
    yep. look at faux news

    Ha! I call it the same thing!
  • Reply 158 of 215
    Really cool stuff. Thank's a lot :-)
  • Reply 159 of 215

    Android will become android when Samsung goes full court with their competitive Tizen OS.  

    Tizen: Samsung Makes Quiet Push for New Mobile Operating System

  • Reply 160 of 215
    No doubt! Now i want to see this article published everywhere, For a year .. Once a week .. With a giant headline!
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