Apple hits highest market share in 15 years

[Rick]

The number of Apple enthusiasts continues to creep upward as Apple bumps past the five percent mark to 5.3 percent, representing a major psychological milestone for the Cupertino-based company. This is up from 4.4% about a year ago. 

While Apple's success still is not quite enough to make them number one in computers, Apple's growth in the personal computer market has handily bested all other PC manufacturers. The company's growth in computer sales accounted for 20 percent of all personal computer shipments, the result of a generous 25.6 percent bump from last year's performance. Compared against the industry average of 4.0 percent, it is clear Apple still has plenty of momentum.

The enterprising company also continues to make headway into the business sector, outpacing the rest of the market by nine to one. To put it more illustratively, that is 43.8 percent versus the industry average of 4.8 percent. There are expectations that Apple will continue to flourish in business markets because Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, has publicly stated he has more interest in working with enterprise customers than the company has previously shown.

Chart courtesy of Needham/IDC

China is now Apple's second largest market with a record sales of $4.5 billion during Q3 of 2011. This is also echoed in other world markets, where the company has gained 19.5 percent growth in Europe despite an overall, 10.5 percent industry decline last quarter.

Chart courtesy of Needham/IDC

These numbers are not without controversy though. The firm who performed the analysis, Needham & Company, chose to lump together tablets with personal computer sales. This is not unlike other recent analyses performed by a plethora of companies, but this does give Apple an obvious edge being that they are still the #1 tablet manufacturer in the world.

So now, the question is, are tablets really "personal computers"? How should a PC be defined these days?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/46345-apple-hits-highest-market-share-in-15-years.html

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

How should a PC be defined these days?

Well, from what I've read, there are two types of PCs. Content creation (writing docs, using excel, etc) and content consumption (surfing, facebook, youtube, netflix, etc). Home PCs are both, tablets are only the latter.

I'd say group them in, since we mostly use PCs for consumption, but it's defintely worthy of an asterisk, and as a reader I appreciate the complete information.

 

[Mizzou]

If Apple can secure a foothold in the corporate space these numbers will only go up.

 

[cliffordcooley]

If Apple can secure a foothold in the corporate space these numbers will only go up.

Whats keeping Apple from gaining a foothold in corporate space?

I've never dealt with Apple so I don't understand why.

 

[RH00D]

cliffordcooley said:

If Apple can secure a foothold in the corporate space these numbers will only go up.

Whats keeping Apple from gaining a foothold in corporate space?

I've never dealt with Apple so I don't understand why.

Probably their desire to make everything so you *must* send it into Apple for it to be repaired, and their desire to control everything and have it locked down. That's not necessarily a bad thing in the consumer market, but it just won't fly in the corporate space so well.

 

[Archean]

Mizzou said:
If Apple can secure a foothold in the corporate space these numbers will only go up.

Which seems unlikely for a forseeable future, considering how far MS has come when it comes to overall stability of the OS, also, there is a major issue with regard to porting customized solutions to another platform, whose costs not many companies would be willing to incur.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

cliffordcooley said:
Whats keeping Apple from gaining a foothold in corporate space?

I've never dealt with Apple so I don't understand why.

I can think of a few things.... 1) The vast majority of people still use MS and Office at home, so if you're a new company looking for an OS, then MS provides the smallest learning curve for your employees.
2) If you're an established company you probably already have MS, and the cost of switching is far too high. 3) many companies write their own software for small functions, which would mean extra testing and issues with a new OS. 4) Vendors have already written software only for Windows. 5) Does Apple have the integration required, like ease of use with VPN's, integration with Unix and other OS's?

I'm assuming the costs of each would be equal, but in reality, i wouldn't be surprised if a bulk deal from Dell with Windows was cheaper than one from Apple.

 

[SNGX1275]

I can think of a few things.... 1) The vast majority of people still use MS and Office at home, so if you're a new company looking for an OS, then MS provides the smallest learning curve for your employees.
2) If you're an established company you probably already have MS, and the cost of switching is far too high. 3) many companies write their own software for small functions, which would mean extra testing and issues with a new OS. 4) Vendors have already written software only for Windows. 5) Does Apple have the integration required, like ease of use with VPN's, integration with Unix and other OS's?

1. Agreed, although the learning curve is nearly non-existant for Office apps. Using the Dock is like the quick launch bar. But doing any customization is quite a bit different from Windows. So for the average office worker there probably isn't much difference, difference would be quite big for IT though.
2. Yep.
3. Yep.
4. Yep. There is overlap in a lot of the big softwares, but specialized software for individual companies would likely be a big hurdle.
5a. VPN support is built in.
5b. Also screen sharing - I have not tried 'remote desktop' to a Windows machine, but you can control a Linux machine in the exact same way as another Mac, it just has to be set up on the linux machine - what the Mac user does though is identical between sharing with another Mac and the Linux machine. I would assume that you can do the same with Windows but I haven't tried.
5c. As far as integration with UNIX, it should be pretty seamless (moreso than Windows I'd imagine) since Lion is built on a "fully compliant UNIX foundation". (Earlier versions should be too, but I only see the Server variant mentioning that, but the server version and the regular version are architecturally identical, just the server has some additional stuff added - Lion doesn't have a Server version, the extra stuff is included).

 

[cliffordcooley]

Thanks for the explanations.

So basically its a stalemate between business and personal. Neither one wants to use Apple because of the other. Not to mention the price differences making Apple too expensive to consider.

 

[inventix1136]

milwaukeemike said:

cliffordcooley said:
Whats keeping Apple from gaining a foothold in corporate space?

I've never dealt with Apple so I don't understand why.

I can think of a few things.... 1) The vast majority of people still use MS and Office at home, so if you're a new company looking for an OS, then MS provides the smallest learning curve for your employees.
2) If you're an established company you probably already have MS, and the cost of switching is far too high. 3) many companies write their own software for small functions, which would mean extra testing and issues with a new OS. 4) Vendors have already written software only for Windows. 5) Does Apple have the integration required, like ease of use with VPN's, integration with Unix and other OS's?

I'm assuming the costs of each would be equal, but in reality, i wouldn't be surprised if a bulk deal from Dell with Windows was cheaper than one from Apple.

Here are a couple of issues why Apple will NEVER be a player in the enterprise market:

1. Apple tend to kill enterprise products without much notice. For example their server line was killed TWICE, meaning that there is almost ZERO chance that enterprises will take another whack at a Apple server product, no matter how good.

2. Virtualization, only possible on a Mac and OS X, meaning that large enterprise virtualizers like VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix ZenServer, can't be used. This is a deal breaker for most enterprises. Our company develops enterprise software and we test everything on virtual machines using black box automated testing. This is IMPOSSIBLE with OS X since it only supports virtualization if the machine is a Mac running OS X to begin with. Many companies are also starting with virtualized applications and workstations, both are NOT supported by OS X and Apple. If I am a large enterprise, I might support a couple of Mac's for the creative department, but for most LOB employees it is operating system that can run on the enterprise virtualizers mentioned above.

3. Support. Most hardware devices have drivers for Windows only and it is a PAIN IN THE A** to find drivers for Linux/Unix/OS X. And even if you do manage to find a driver, it might not be as stable as the one for Windows (newest ones).

4. Enterprise management software. Most IT departments have enterprise management software that keeps track of machines, software installed on it, monitoring, etc... Unfortunately OS X is not really supported by most enterprise management software packages. This includes controlling updates to only update machines after IT has TESTED the update to make sure it hasn't caused issues.

5. Software development. Let's face it, development for the OS X is kind of a pain and most enterprise developers tend to be LOB and to get it out the door as quickly as possible. Given the lack of testing infrastructure, such as blackbox automated testing, and diagnostic tools, development for OS X is risky because we can't spin up a new VM and throw our automated testing suites on it to do regression testing to see if someone accidentally broke something on our 2+ million lines of code software.

6. Software. There is actually not that much in terms of commercial software available for OS X.

What this means is that Apple will make inroads into the consumer world but can't be a major player in enterprise market. Not only that, given the history of Apple and the decisions of late, Apple does not WANT to be a player in the enterprise market.

 

[amstech]

The amount of people that aren't good with computers but need them for everyday life is staggeringly high. Aka Mac users.

 

[Guest]

Funny how you don't see PC users here bashing Mac fans for their low market share, or inability to understand why Mac is not in the enterprise market. "Well... my smartphone is better than Windows Phone, shouldn't everyone have a Mac?"

I guess that debate only arises within the smartphone/tablet community. This is why Apple pushes in the consumer market, where there are fair weather fans and band-wagons galore. All you have to do is make someone feel like they are superior in their niche.

Microsoft has been developer friendly since its inception, and I'm not sure why people choose to forget or put on blinders to remove this fact. This is a major reason why MS is in the enterprise market, not just because Apple is "missing features, or otherwise they would be on equal footing".

The very reason people hate MS, not innovating enough, or coming out with a new product making you believe you have to upgrade, ie Office, is done with Apple products. You want a better product? Buy the upgraded software or hardware.