Analyst: Apple’s U.S. consumer market share now 21 percent

The past is the past. Here is the portend of the future foe Apple: http://www.axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/17275

Apple is a distant 7th with only 3 percent of the sales for PCs in Q3 08.

It showing just big hand of apple in US. Certainly its only the quality and best services that has made it possible to have such a beg share in so competitive market.

Yes, but let’s get the facts straight.

“1. OSX is still a $300 copy of freeware”
OS X is proprietary software built on and open source core. You can download the core from apple for free and do with it what you like…
“2. You still can’t run 90% of the software out there without loading another operating system.”
Flat out bs- there are equivalent programs, especially on intel macs (on PPC macs to) that will do anything you can do on a PC.
“3. As far as Linux platforms are concerned apple is still the weakest of the bunch.”
OS X isn’t Linux. It’s built on BSD Unix, and again, its GUI is proprietary.

If you want to slam something, at least get the facts straight.
So it might be cheaper but you get what you pay for I guess.

Thank you for
putting this info out
there for us all to read.

Knowledge really is power.

You are empowering us.

Thank you and kudos.

Linda
http://www.attentiontodetailgifts.com

Yes, when it comes down to it you can look at a few simple facts.

1. OSX is still a $300 copy of freeware
2. You still can’t run 90% of the software out there without loading another operating system.
3. As far as Linux platforms are concerned apple is still the weakest of the bunch.

So it might be cheaper but you get what you pay for I guess.

Sure there are disocunts from Apple. As we speak, that $1499 iMac is available for $1399 in the edustore or $1249 in the refurbished store.

It is more difficult to find a discounted Macintosh, but I was able to do just that at Amazon recently for a previous generation model. In fact you can save almost $500 getting a previous generation Mac Book pro.

Apple users are subjected to pay a premium for silly things like getting a black macbook, I believe it is currently at $100.

The enterprise market would be a tough place for apple to enter. First you need to get to the people who make the IT decisions.

He compares MSRP pricing. He doesn’t compare street prices.

Macs are never discounted. PC Laptops usually sell $200-$500 below MSRP so the comparison is misleading. EOL laptops are even more deeply discounted as well.

I would say the pure HW spec wise, Macs are 2x the price. However, there are intangibles that add value to the Mac depending on who the buyer is.

The fact that Apple can sell their HW at 2x the price is in itself amazing.

Fact. Apple has out performed the rest of the industry in the areas it competes in.

If Apple ever decides to go after enterprise sales in ernest the world wide numbers will go up accordingly.

I started on Mac before any of you ever considered a computer and well the GUI hasn’t changed much since 1996, so I am not sure where the “It’s intuitive, sexy and like the OS you’ll expect to see in Windows in 2012.” Please consider one because my Vista laptop is rock solid and well someone told me it was buggy and crashy so I guess I will take their word on it, even though it hasn’t happened in a year yet, but I am sure the buggy and crashiness is right around the corner because the Mac users said so. Onward in upward in my productivity for now.

Have you considered looking at a Mac? You should. Once you get one, you’ll wonder why you didn’t look before. It’s intuitive, sexy and like the OS you’ll expect to see in Windows in 2012.

I don’t have an Apple but I do have a plastic shell molded to look like an Apple that I leave on the coffee table. To impress visitors you know.

remember - a mac is a computer with training wheels that you can never take off

that said, i have made a BUNDLE on aapl stock over the last 2 years and loaded up again recently in the 120s and 130s - even added some this morning in the low 140s - onward and upward

did you expect anything different from a school system, its like the government trying to do something, its all bloated and underestimated.

As Apple eats away at Microsoft’s market share on the consumer side of PCs and mobile devices, and Google chips at Microsoft Office’s share in business, Microsoft is caught in the middle and facing a two-front war. Also, the fundamental shift to a service model, which has been going on for quite some time in the enterprise market, will get seriously businesslike this year and change the computing world over the next few years, putting Microsoft at a disadvantage. You can read my take on this at my blog, Get Off Microsoft.

In Feb.of 2007 a handful of Parkway District Administrators and School BOE members (St. Louis County) took away the individual schools’ ability to buy Macs and forced everyone to adopt Windows XP’s. Above the vocal protests of teachers and staff the officials told the public they would save the District $250,000 a year. Now a year later the IT Dept. has doubled its staff and the District announced the need of a new Bond issue to complete the transition - this after only with half of the schools converted.

No small part of this cost was the need to replace all instructional and virus protection software, purchase new servers, hiring and training new staff, addressing staff development, etc, etc.

The IT Director would not even send APPLE COMPUTER Respresentatives a bid form for the new computers even though they were INTEL compatable. He told people that the Apple Mac would not be considered because it would require two IP addresses if used with XP *(Duh!).

I offer these facts because even articles like these do not include the “full meal deal” in cost comparisons. Parkway, for example, is still trying to figure out how to replace the free “Ilife Series”with commercial XP applications.

You would think that any large scale district computer OS migration (regardless of platform) - would have a wide discussion and a detailed cost assessment. That did not happen in Parkway.Unfortunately covert politics seem to play a more important role in decision making than staff need or cost assessments.

I took my 4.5 year-old iBook to the ‘Genius Bar’ at the local Apple Store.

They diagnosed my problem (spending about 20 min. with me and my computer) for FREE. I was shocked.

Does any other computer maker give FREE tech support? How about face-to-face tech support?

Factor that in to the price of Macs and the delta between PCs becomes even smaller.

People’s posts here make me laugh. Its like school children arguing about something they think they know so well. Apple makes a good product and well they have a 100% grip on all the hardware and software on it, so I would expect a more than stellar piece of machinery. On the other hand Microsoft and Linux have do not make hardware or drivers for the hardware that runs on their OS. This is the peice that many miss I think. Apple has an advantage of controlling all aspects while MS has to depend on many of thousands of hardware makers to make a driver that works like it should. For those that didn’t know, the drivers that the hardware makers published during the Vista release was a major problem for MS, but it all goes back to Vista because many don’t know any better than to realize how the MS depends on so many others its not funny. Please don’t trash others to make a point, make a case and then let people ponder that. Oh and to the guy that said vista is buggy and all that, well I have been using Vista x64 for almost a year now and after I got that nvidia driver squared away its been smooth sailing, guess i was just lucky right???

Enough with the sour grapes! Get an Apple.

So much for “Mac news from outside the reality distortion field”!

If they sell “~2m per quarter” worldwide, and “70% are enterprise”, that only leaves 600k units per quarter for GLOBAL personal sales. Even in half of this is US based, I struggle to believe that 300k units is enough to hit 21% of the US market. Anyone got any third party data?

Bought Apple shares two years ago at $65, it went up recently to $185 and like the rest of the market, came down, but its still at $140 now.

Something else about Apple computers that give a good indication of their durability and life span:

A garbage collector in New York city, said he sees PC’s all the time thrown out. But never once has he ever seen anyone throw out an Apple computer, no matter how old.

Mmmmmm….

@lulz:

“Macs bundle in ilife, where as the PCs he used to compare have no software included.”

But they do! PCs ship with trial versions of antivirus and spyware and all sorts of bundled crapware and craplets.

I purchased a Mac Book Pro about a year ago in part it was a response to the word I was hearing that Vista was problematic. That and the new Macs allow me to run XP or Win 2003 in Parrallel. So I had Windows, Mac and Linux on one machine. Yep.

This computer does anything and everything I ask of it. Running win 2003 for development programming, running iLife for video, audio and pics. I do it all.

And I read that the Mac Book Pro won the Vista performance benchmarks for Vista. Put that in you Dell and smoke it.

In response to “meme” of Iowa City and his/her comments about Mac laptops not being “full featured”. A little bit of education here: there is a difference between loading up a laptop with features and loading it with features that people care about. Most of the features you list are “don’t cares”. Adding features like a finger print reader only add cost to the machine and is a feature the majority of people don’t use. People have dogged the iPod for years because none of the models have an FM tuner. Who cares? It hasn’t seemed to hurt iPod sales or help iPod competitors. Apple knows what people what - that’s why their computers are out selling competitors and taking market share slowly but surely.

My boss made the mistake of buying Dell PCs for our studio.
They were obsolete before they arrived.

At any given time one is out of commission for one reason or another; our well meaning boss has spent our bonuses on IT.

When the last one arrived there was an audible groan in the office as the UPS guy brought it in. It was given the username POS and hooked up, quickly living up to its name. Both the hardware and software of these machines look as if they were made in the 90s.

The computers came with XP a horribly messy effort, and ‘Vista’ is a sad copy of OSX, buggy and clumsy. It is truly a mystery how it was successfully palmed off as an improvement. There are no plans to ‘upgrade’ until it’s forced on us.

Meanwhile, the studio also has several Mac laptops as well. They have required next to NO support, the only snafu being the IT people’s ignorance, and while OSX is not perfect it gives one hope that someone can design an OS that doesn’t need constant nursing.

When doing cost comparisons, what no one ever takes into consideration is customer support. For those of us that live near an Apple store, the benefit of being able to bring in your Apple gear, regardless of age, for FREE consultation at an Genius Bar is PRICELESS. Try that with Dell, HP or Gateway. When you are having issues with your Mac and the Apple Genius gets you fixed up in :20 minutes, that 15% extra you spent now all of a sudden means nothing. In the end, you get what you pay for. Apple provides world class products and services at reasonable prices.

Gen-Y (11:29am): Plain and simple, Apple doesn’t have any Macs geared towards gaming, so the gaming argument does hold up. Perfect example: the first Mac I bought for myself when I went to college was a first generation Quicksilver G4 867. I payed a crapload of money to get a GeForce3 card put in there which was cutting edge at the time — I think it was a $300 option. However, PowerMac’s still had regular SDRAM running at 100MHz while everyone else was on to DDR or RAMBUS. Also, the hard drives were on ATA/66 when everyone else was on ATA/100 or ATA/133. (Apple was also kinda late the party with SerialATA.) The point is that Apple thought, and may still think, that just putting in the latest and greatest video card was enough. It takes a lot more than that to attract the gamers, who frequently upgrade their machines and would be an absolute cash cow for Apple if they could attract the market. It’s so established now and they’re so far behind that it may be too late.

The reality of the gaming argument is that the percentage of games that are developed on the Mac, which is now practically zero (basically just Ambrosia, hardly a giant), dropped off significantly as games began to require more computer resources — which happened to coincide with Apple’s decline in market share for other reasons. It wasn’t always this way. Games used to be actively developed on the Mac — for instance Myst and SimCity 2000 (and I think all Maxis games) to name a few blockbusters. Now they’re all developed on Windows platforms, and getting games on the Mac is a matter of a company willing to accept razor-thin profit margins for a big, long, expensive, and often outsourced porting effort.

The argument that the most popular games are always ported is flimsy. Tell that to people who’d like to play Half-Life on their Mac. Luckily for your argument Blizzard has been one of the few gaming companies that has been committed to the Mac. Bungie used to be as well, until Microsoft bought them. The rest of the studios, depends on whether or not they feel like it. There are plenty of popular games I could list off that never let Mac users in on the party.

Actually, Dell Xeons are more expensive than Mac Xeons, especially when you compare them feature-for-feature. Dells to have pretty deep discounts. And it’s probably not real fair to bring up the comment from Michael Dell several years ago when he declared Apple dead and that they should give investors back their money. But who’s crying now?

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Has anyone noticed (or mentioned) that the iMac comes complete with a built in monitor? Do any of the others it is being compared with include a monitor?

Actually it’s closer to 22% marketshare. Please round up your figures next time.

Mac laptops are NOT full featured laptops, they are really half baked laptops. My PC laptop have on top what on Mac laptops (compared to Macbook pro 17″): Multi memory card reader, HDMI port (better than DVI alone), VGA port, S video port. eSATA post, 54/34 ExpressCard slot, two speakers output (one SPDIF), finger print reader, takes two hard drives, the screen is real HD screen, BLUE RAy DVD,much powerful video card. remote control (free), all of that half the price of the MacBook pro 17″. I own a Macbook (the $1299) and I regret buying it two months ago it is just a wast of money, and by the way Vista is working extremely well and fast with not even a glitch.

I just priced a Dell XPS 1330 laptop (the correct one to compare to the MacBook. With comparable features (HD, RAM, Bluetooth, etc.) it’s over $300 MORE than the MacBook!!! Why are you comparing a 1.66GHz Dell with a 2.1GHz MacBook (other than to find one cheaper for your comparison)? Talk about biased!!!!!

I saw not too long ago a price comparison between a Mac server Dell server that had similar hardware specs. The MAC was actually significantly cheaper! Not to mention the fact that there were no extra licensing fees for the server software.

@Tony

“Mac Pro’s used to be competitively priced until they switched to Xeons”

Mac Pros have used Xeons since their August 2006 introduction. If you are referring to the PowerMac G5…

People who hold up the gaming argument with Macs are simply not in touch with reality. Apple is not Microsoft. They do not have an in-house gaming division. So it rests on the market to provide games for the platform.

By registered userbase, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft product is far and away the most popular pc game available today, and guess what… it comes in a mac binary.

The games that are profitable to port, will or have been ported. The ones that aren’t, won’t. End of sermon.

Apple also includes a lot of other software features across the board that Windows does not, such as PDF built into every application. Try running a small business without PDF capability. You can get it a number of ways for less on the PC, but to get something as good on the PC you have to pay Adobe over $400. That’s nearly enough to buy a Mac mini outright, and more than makes up for any miniscule difference in price between a real Mac and a generic PC with the same basic features (and far less style).

It is not a very good comparison since all Macs ship with Mac OS X that gives more capabilities than the most expensive version of Vista.

Macs may cost 16% more, but their included software is 100% better. Do PC’s come with iMovie, iPhoto, and the whole hosts of other iLife apps? Review after review says they don’t measure up. And don’t forget, a Mac is a dual computer, able to run both Mac OS and Windows, so that 16% gets you 200% computer! A pretty good deal.

Come on guys! Is this an April Fools joke or what????

When looking at prices, it’s important that the computers are comparably configured.

All Mac laptops are full featured machines that include every port you’d ever need for future external expansion, especially when compared to PC laptops.

MacBooks include FireWire 400, USB2, Airport Wireless 82.011n, gigabit ethernet and built-in dual monitor support. MacBook Pros additionally feature FireWire 800, ExpressCard 34 and full-sized DVI ports. ALL will accept up to 4GB of RAM.

How do the “cheaper” PCs noted in the price comparison charts spec comparatively?

The comparisons as far as harware is concerned are relatively close.

its the software that is inconsistant.

Macs bundle in ilife, where as teh PCs he used to compare have no software included.

I’ve always thought the market share numbers were a read herring because they only represent the market as a whole instead of each individual sector. PCs may have cornered the market in database servers and grocery store cash registers, but who cares since Apple obviously doesn’t design its computers for those purposes.

It’s encouraging to see 21% consumer market share, but I wonder what the gaming market share is. This is one areas the Apple continues to neglect and it’s such a big piece of the consumer market pie.

I’m also curious as to how all of Apple’s computer lines compare against comparable PC models, particularly Mac Pro’s and Xserves. Mac Pro’s used to be competitively priced until they switched to Xeons, but Xserves have always been cheap alternatives to PC servers particularly because OS X Server licenses are cheaper than Windows Server licenses. However, I’m making assumptions here, I’d like to see the raw data.

The price comparisons are inaccurate because of the inconsistent hardware comparisons.