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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Mac market share up to 2.77 percent

Nexus readers know I'm into facts when it comes to market share. I've seen a lot of reports on Mac Web sites quoting fantastical market share growth, but as you might expect, these numbers come from one source and are US market only. Here's what's really happening.

There are two main companies estimating PC market share and growth, Gartner and IDC. According to the analysts at Gartner, the overall PC industry sold 59.1 million computers in the third quarter of 2006. IDC, meanwhile, has a slightly different figure, 57 million units, along with different estimates for sales at the top three PC makers, HP, Dell, and Gateway. Apple, we know, sold 1.61 million PCs in the quarter (what Apple reports as its fourth quarter in fiscal 2006).

Here's how the market share percentages break down from each company:

Gartner: Total PC sales: 59.1 million units
HP - 16.3 percent - 9.652 million units
Dell - 16.1 percent - 9.541 million units
Lenovo - 7.5 percent
Acer - 6 percent
Toshiba - 4.2 percent
..
Apple - 2.72 percent - 1.61 million units

IDC: Total PC sales: 57 million units
HP - 16.3 percent - 9.831 million units
Dell - 16.1 percent - 9.803 million units
Lenovo - 7.8 percent
Acer - 6 percent
Toshiba - 4.2 percent
..
Apple - 2.82 percent - 1.61 million units

Since I like to average the Gartner and IDC estimates to get a more accurate figure, we can do some simple math and arrive at the following: Apple's share of the PC market, in the third quarter of 2006, was 2.77 percent.

Average: Total PC sales: 58.05 million units
Apple: 2.77 percent

This is a significant gain for Apple. As I've demonstrated in the past, increasing market share is surprisingly difficult and requires dramatic growth when compared to the competition. For the quarter, Apple reported that it grew unit sales 30 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, Gartner and IDC disagree over how well the overall PC market performed in the quarter, but it was clearly far less impressive than what Apple accomplished. According to Gartner, overall PC growth for the quarter (measured year-over-year) was 6.7 percent. IDC says it was 7.9 percent.

[ Posted at 3:23 PM | Permalink ]