I haven’t been using Apple computers for a terribly long time, just six years or so now. However, just six years ago Apple was still a small market, only popular for the iPod and iTunes really. Market share was 4-ish percent for their computers. Since then, Apple has gone from being a niche tool to being a reliable and logical choice for PC users. There are very few solutions that can’t be run on a Mac (those that can’t, you can still run in Windows on the Mac), and with iPod, iPhone, and iPad ubiquitousness it makes sense for a lot of people to have a homogenized computing experience. Because of these reasons we’re seeing Apple reach a lot of firsts — firsts that would be significant for any company, but truly amazing for a company that was on the brink of failure only 14 years ago.
AppleInsider reported yesterday that Apple experienced a ½ percent growth in Europe during the June quarter. While this seems modest and hardly newsworthy, competitive vendors experienced not a little decline, but massive year-over-year decline. AppleInsider published a great spreadsheet that you should really take a look at, but to give you an idea what the competition looks like, HP declined 6.1 percent and Acer Group fell a whopping 44.6 percent!! Yikes!
And in spite of that Apple shares continue to rise. Can anyone explain how this works? But I digress…
The Apple Blog reported that Apple is beginning to get a strong foothold in Chinese sales with Apple recently surpassing Lenovo in sales revenue. Lenovo still takes the cake in volume, but Apple is obviously being far more profitable. Who says capitalism doesn’t work in China?
Back to Europe again… tablet sales were not reported in these numbers. I have to ask if Apple iPad sales are what is pulling down the PC market? Outside of professionals, I feel pretty confident to say that a good tablet (ehem… iPad) is going to take care of anyone’s day-to-day computing needs. If I had a choice between a svelte iPad for $500 (or its Euro equivalent), or a clunky micro-PC, or TinyTin, ConcubinalComputing choice, or whatever they’re calling them these days, I would go for an iPad. (In hindsight, I could possibly choose the ConcubinalComputing device, but I’m really not sure about it right now.)
What effect do you think the iPad is having on PC sales?
Source: AppleInsider, The Apple Blog
Via: Gartner, GigaOM
Image Credit: Robert S. Donovan
