66% Apple Market Share For Sales of High-End PCs 724
An anonymous reader lets us know about a recent analysis of retail computer sales numbers that shines a spotlight on Apple's sales growth as the PC market has flattened. In the lucrative >$1,000 PC segment, in the first quarter of 2008, Apple's retail market share was 66%. This includes a 64% market share for laptops and a market share for desktops of 70%. The article attributes the bulk of this success to Apple's stores. Fortune picked up this report and pointed out the somewhat obvious fact that the >$1,000 PC segment is Apple's by default, since Dell, HP, and Lenovo sell the bulk of their machines in the $500-$750 range, and Apple has only one model selling for less than $1,000. As the analyst said, "If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."
$1,000 market dominance... (Score:5, Interesting)
For U.S. Retail sales only. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you were to count BTO computers sold over phone or internet in the U.S. Apple's market share would drop. Add the rest of the world and Apple's market share shrinks even more.
That said, Apple is gaining speed and is only going to be selling more computers for the foreseeable future.
What a great threadjack. (Score:3, Interesting)
Very funny, you flipped a troll conversation about Apple fanboys into a Windows fanboy send up. It is as if the entire energy and malice of the GP was turned onto the GP by a subtle shift in balance.
You can't win for losing. (Score:2, Interesting)
You have one of two cases and I don't think you like the one you already chose:
Both of these are losers for Windows fanboys, but the first is closer to true and th worst. The fact is that people are paying twice as much for Macs and the only difference is software and marginally better hardware. There are "premium" Wintel laptops but they are sitting on the shelf because people are buying twice as many premium Apples. The real bummer for those other hardware makers is that they have produced far more laptops than Apple can and must be piling up big losses while Apple is having trouble metting demand.
You joke about it but you have nothing but insults.
Re:You get... (Score:2, Interesting)
But even then, you're stuck with the cheapest EVERYTHING ELSE. A computer isn't just the processor.
You have the motherboard, the memory, the hard drive, the video card, the sound card, the battery, the power adapter, the integrated peripherals like webcam and microphone, the keyboard, the mouse, the case, the ports and where they're located, and so on.
Yeah, they both use Intel Core 2 Duo processors from the same source. But you'd better believe that you're not getting the same quality everything else on a Dell as you are on an Apple.
Trust me on this. A Dell laptop lasts a maximum of two years without major repair. Either the hard drive dies or the memory dies. That's not to mention the Dell batteries which become useless just after the warranty expires. Guess who works at a company that has a contract with Dell to provide all our PCs.
Re:It really is preference (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How did they lose market share? (Score:3, Interesting)
Like $1000+ is a lot of money (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need Apple. (Score:2, Interesting)
You have GNU/Linux. Windows users are buying Macs for twice as much as they are willing to pay for Vista machines because they don't know enough about free software. The party will be over for both Microsoft and Apple when more vendors join the free software movement. EEEPC and Dells with Linux preinstalled just work and that's a large measure of what Apple customers are spending premium dollars on.
A side note to all of this is that premium is not what it used to be. $1,000 is what people used to spend on middle of the road desktops ... fifteen years ago. The same equipment would sell for $2,500 if it's worth had kept up with inflation. Obviously, that has not happened even for Apple. Premium computers were selling for $5,000 back then and that's what they are going for today, despite tremendous strides it convenience and utility.
Re:How did they lose market share? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Industrial design does matter (Score:5, Interesting)
As for not "moving my hand from one place" try moving between open files in Xcode within the same window pane without using a mouse or the touchpad. Its <option><command><left arrow> or <option><command><right arrow>. I don't mind having to use two modifiers but I do mind having to use two hands. Or how about page-up and page-down? Again, on my MacBook, for aesthetic sake, page up and down were left off. So, I have to use two hands (<fn><arrow up> to page up. Or Home and End. Is it <command><left arrow> or <fn><left arrow>. I've found it depends on the application. Will it take me to the end of the line or the end of the text? And will the cursor come with it? Or Delete. Again, depends on the application.
Yes, no stupid buttons on a MacBook (or Apple keyboard) Instead, Apple decided to appropriate the functions keys. Who needs those right? I do: Parallels or VMWare is worthless without re-assigning all the Expose and Spaces keys. <Command><F12> here I come!
Also, on my 4 year old eMachines I can click, right click, scroll and middle click without having to move my hand off the trackpad either. And, there are trackpads out there that pan too. Sure, it doesn't do it with two fingers like the Mac trackpad, but at least I get two real buttons which can then simulate a third (for true Unix goodness)
Look, my primary machine is my MacBook and I love it. Further, I do Visualization research on a Quad core Mac pro. But OS X and Apple are not the end all be all of of good design. I love the MacBook keyboard but guess what? Showed up on the Vaio first. And the matte grey finish for the hand rests? Mine are kind of scummy and discolored. I've had a bunch of Dell laptops (D610, D620, Inspiron 3200, 700m) and I've never had the hand rests of them go all scummy. And don't get me started on the Dock...
P.S. I think the m1330 is actually a pretty nice piece of kit. Its designed well and its got discrete graphics and can be had for cheaper than a MacBook if you wait for a sale (which happen about every other day).
Re:Correction (Score:5, Interesting)
What's your next guess?
In OS X, Mac schedules threads and allocates memory. That's about it. The rest of the kernel services in OS X either came from BSD, or were written in-house at Apple.
Mac OS X is UNIX. Read and learn. [apple.com]
-jcr
Re:You get... (Score:1, Interesting)
Hardware failures are common and it wouldn't be a real problem if (1) Apple's harware wasn't so homogeneous, so that when a few users have a problem, others will probably follow and (2) Apple didn't send blindfolds (glossy, shiny, but still blindfolds) to anyone who complained, claiming the warranty is of one year only when my country's laws clearly state that it lasts 2 years if the product was sold here, regardless of who made it and where.
On a sidenote, they're so picky chosing the right RAM byte by byte that I've been waiting for a replacement for a stick for 2 months. It's not my computer and it's not regularly used, but still...
Re:It really is preference (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had experiences with my share of laptop manufacturers over time - with differing levels of disappointment - and I've seen paper machie constructions with more structural integrity than some Dell laptops.
I'm rather happy with my Lenovo these days. It's pretty solid and fast enough.
But from using current Mac laptops, I've been impressed at how well they work as a WinPC laptop (runs Vista better than any other I've tried), and the quality of hardware / design.
There's lots of competition in the PC mobile market.
But there's not that much competition for good and durable PCs in that market as one would like.
Re:Another Mac sales tale (Score:3, Interesting)
And let me tell you, my friends, were all sorts of pissed. I asked them why, because logicaly, if the whole school uses Windows PCs, having macs would only complicate matters. Their responce, and I'm not making this up.
"Macs are pretty. I don't care how good they are, but they look nice. I feel like a REAL college student if I have a Mac on my desk."
Shocked me, and nothing I said could convince them that they wanted a Mac because they were pretty. IF they wanted it because of ANY other reason, i'd been fine. But just because it's shiny...it was just beyond me. Apple sells image, which is why they have whole stores set up to show it off.
Re:You get... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Costing more is not necessarily more expensive. (Score:3, Interesting)
"There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey."
John Ruskin (1819 - 1900), (attributed)
Damn true, and I concur with your post 100%.
Re:$1,000 market dominance... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was nothing to do with chavs suddenly starting wearing the same Burberry jackets that everyone was familiar with; instead, Burberry bizarrely brought out a range of clothes that only chavs would wear.
Your example is one that perfectly points out the dangers that Apple would face if they went toe-to-toe with Dell for $500 laptops and grey boxes.
Re:Price != High End (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a simple FreeBSD notebook here and can do my work without MS-Windows.
Re:$1,000 market dominance... (Score:4, Interesting)
www.apple.com
Go price them up - you know how hard it is to hardlink to anything once specd up on these sites.
I bought Mac Pros for work (fully kitted out, just after the refresh) and they were significantly cheaper than the Dells, plus I can triple boot them. The key is it needs to be high end and fairly close to release - Apple generally don't reduce their prices much over time so the deals get less attractive.
Re:Costing more is not necessarily more expensive. (Score:2, Interesting)
When I started out building myself PCs I tried to get the cheapest parts, but then when I stopped being a student and got a job I realized I could pay more and get stuff that's comfortably faster or bigger. That said, my cheap K6-2 system still runs today, though it has been made obsolete by my old dell latitude laptop which makes as good a server at 1/6 of the power consumption.
I bought an Apple Keyboard recently because I like to try out interesting looking peripherals every once in a while. I can handle the keys being flat and the enter key being small - that's all fine with me, I bought it because it was different. But while the body is quite stiff and heavy, the key mechanisms themselves are pretty cheap feeling - the keys all rock from side to side, and some keys only have one spring under it when they really should have two or more. The rocking is made worse by the fact that they're flat - normal slightly concave keys will still cup your fingertip when they rock slightly, but with the flat ones you can feel the slope.
I know that a keyboard isn't necessarily representative of the whole shebang, but it gives the impression that nowadays the extra money is going more toward design than engineering.
Goes along with the "Engineer Shortage" article... (Score:4, Interesting)
So we get things that actually work better out of the box, and mature well over time. Hell, each apple product I have bought has lasted me 4+ years. And then I only "upgrade" because I can afford to upgrade the storage of the laptops myself, increase the RAM significantly, and a fresh install, and give it to a member of my family. Who are shocked that the finest computer in their house was not the dell running vista, but the four-year-old mac... Gaining new Apple users, and when they will buy a new computer in a few years, they might decide to go with the brand that has lasting value.
Seriously, if you want to pay less, then you devalue their employees. Make 'em more like Microsoft minions, expendable and not working together at any point. Sure you get the product eventually... And its cheaper.... But customers will most spend the rest of that products life complaining about it.
And no, I am not bashing the "free" concept of Linux, because Linux is a passion. One might spend a few days working out a glitch they encountered and submitting the fix. Then they feel great about accomplishing something no one else has done, and might go on to mend other things, or add other features. By keeping it a hobby that all are free to contribute to, people contribute for free.... And if we added up all those man hours on our favorite distro in a given year, it would be a fortune to pay.
Self-built? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:$1,000 market dominance... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There is no judo chop. (Score:2, Interesting)
Dont get me wrong... I really like all my macs (100% mac laptop enviroment w/ VMWare server Windows), but the main thing I like is OSX. Vista does not even come close, and Linux, eventhough it is certainly reliable enough, in all its variants really not equipped to take on OSX on the desktop side...
Re:$1,000 market dominance... (Score:1, Interesting)
Fail.
Re:You get... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks. I tire of people reducing an entire computer to 3 or 4 components. I bought a MB simply because it was the best laptop for what I wanted to pay. I figured I'd poke around in OSX, but basically run XP on it.
A month later, I had put my work computer away and was only using the MB at work, and then found that XP at home just bugged the hell out of me with all its annoying messages and beeps and boops and "I connected to the Internet, aren't you proud of me" business. The next bonus I got bought me a Mac Pro (on it right now) and I sold my lovingly handcrafted gaming PC to a friend so it would stop collecting dust.
It's a whole package.
Age ranges (Score:2, Interesting)
If going by personal observations, I will wager a guess that the larger part of the 66% is made up of people who are at mid to upper age ranges.
Re:Style is money (Score:4, Interesting)
The mentality I really despise is that I use my iPhone at the coffee store because I'm some sort of "hipster" and I'm trying to impress everyone around me. Well here's a news flash, I'm not. I'm using my phone to access my email in a public place...where's the crime in that? This a far less worse crime than those idiot-borgs who walk around with the $49 blue tooth thing in their ear trying to impress how important they are upon us.
Frankly, I (and most other Apple consumers I know) don't give a rat's ass about what other people think about our stuff.
Re:There is no judo chop. (Score:3, Interesting)
While he may not be completely accurate, I think he makes a good point when you read between the lines.
Re:It really is preference (Score:5, Interesting)
Other issues I noted really demonstrate that learning the "windows way" really limits the user. Example: you don't HAVE to close the document you have open to move it or rename it in MacOS, even though you've grown accustom to having to do so in Windows. I won't even get into the way Windows users over-think installing and uninstalling apps!
Re:It's mis-leading anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Further... and I realize this is purely anecdotal:
100% of the people I know with Macs bought them retail in an Apple store.
0% of the people I know who have bought non-Mac PCs in the last 5+ years bought them retail. They bought them from a place like Dell online, built them from parts, had someone else build them from parts, etc.
Obviously Best Buy is selling uncustomized non-Mac machines to someone retail or they wouldn't still be doing it, but I don't know the people who are buying them.
Possibly, this says something about the appeal of the Apple store as a retail venue vs. as an online order venue. It's hard to say.
Re:There is no judo chop. (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? Did Steve Jobs come by your house and hold a gun to your head and bark: "Buy a Mac or else?" No? Boy are you lucky. Buy some Apple stock and get some of that profit back in YOUR pocket.
Re:There is no judo chop. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There is no judo chop. (Score:4, Interesting)
a) Microsoft can punitively raise their Windows licensing to the point where any savings from shipping Windows-free Linux PCs are erased. As long has Microsoft can maintain that kind of pricing power over what is a utility monopoly, things can't change. Incidentally, that's why every PC maker advertises "we recommend Windows XP/Vista." It's in their contract! Linux sales and advertising are tightly controlled by Microsoft using its OEM leverage.
b) PC makers investing in software development are afraid that their contributions to GPL software would be used against them. So HP develops a desirable Linux distro that works flawlessly with all the modern video cards, etc, and then Dell can come along and sell it on their PCs without any contribution back, and at no investment expense. Dell wins, HP loses all its investment.
The reason Apple is doing well is because it has no obligation to or dependance upon Microsoft for Windows licensing. If it did, it would instantly be in the same boat as Palm and the other PC makers. And secondly, Apple can invest heavily in developing its own proprietary OS.
Mac OS X is a unix distro with a unique kernel that is open but which no other PC maker can effectively really use or benefit from, and a proprietary development framework and GUI.
Recall that Ray Noorda at Novell and then Caldera tried to pull off something similar with OpenLinux and then United Linux, but couldn't manage to get either one together. If a major software developer couldn't wrangle a suitable Linux desktop distro, how could a PC maker like Dell or HP, neither of which can make software that isn't any better than a flaming turd?
Caledera's OpenLinux: The Linux "Mac OS X" That Failed [roughlydrafted.com]
And for insight on how well a community/corporate partnership can work, look at OpenMoko. It predates the iPhone, but still can't dial from the GUI.
Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone [roughlydrafted.com]
Before you volunteer to help a PC company develop a Linux distro, you might want to consider why they aren't asking for help and why the task might be less appealing than driving nails through your eyelids.
Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone: Linux' Mobile Problem [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:Why bother with Safari, (Score:3, Interesting)
You should see why there are a bunch of folks on
And car companies that do that piss off car geeks to no end. If they can't work on their own car, there's no point.
So I'm sure people here can understand why 'normal' users may like macs but to us, they're garbage.
Re:Why bother with Safari, (Score:3, Interesting)
In a sense, geeks with money can buy a Mac and have their cake and eat it too, at least when it comes to software. With software like Parallels or Fusion, you can install and run every OS MS has ever made, from DOS on up. You can install any number versions of Linux. OSX itself has a *NIX core that will compile and run most UNIX software. A good geek can muck around in the software innards until the system is exactly to their liking.
Now if you're a hardware geek, or poor, better get or build yourself a PC box with just exactly the bits and pieces you want and then have fun with the software as well. Booting multiple OS on a normal PC is tricker, with more chance of something going awry, than simply running any number of OS on a Mac under a VM. Of course VM software works on a regular PC also. Geeks can even run OSX on a regular non-Mac PC.
On that note, I wonder if someone would get in trouble for coming out with a VM on a PC that ran a legally bought copy of OSX as guest OS under say Linux as the host. Maybe something like that already exists. It seems that would be a more elegant solution than the Pystar hack. If users can run a legally obtained copy of Windows in a VM on a Mac, it ought to be OK for someone to run a legal copy of OSX under Linux or even Windows.
Does Apple's EULA or any EULA for that matter have the force of a legally binding agreement? If there is no violation of law, such as copyright law, there may not be much that Apple can do about such a scenario.