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About this siteFor 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 Saturday, July 21, 2007A look at PC market share for the US in Q2 2007A reader was kind enough to point me towards an Apple Investor Relations Web site that contains quarterly information about Apple's regional sales so, what the heck, let's look at Apple's US market share this quarter and going forward. For Apple, the recently concluded quarter is Q3 2007, and hopefully they will provide this detailed information on July 25 alongside their earnings announcement for the quarter.So let's look at that IDC and Gartner data again, this time with a focus on the US: IDC reports that PC shipments totaled 17 million units in calendar Q2 2007, up 7.2 percent year over year. Gartner reports that PC shipments totaled 15.7 million units in the quarter, up 5.9 percent year over year. This growth was higher than expected: The firm had predicted growth of 3.2 percent. Averaging these figures, we arrive at 16.35 million PCs sold in the US. This is the figure I'll use for calculating Apple's US market share for the quarter. However, IDC estimates that Apple sold 960,000 PCs in the US in the quarter, giving it 5.87 percent of the US market. (Gartner does not provide an estimate for Apple, or at least does not place it in the top five.) This figure makes sense: The Mac's US market share has typically over twice that of its worldwide share. A few notes. All of these figures are preliminary. Apple, for example, will release their actual sales figures next week, which should replace any analyst estimates. This is a summary, not an "analysis." This information is all available elsewhere, I'm just collating it. Once you start looking at the US specifically, one might argue that other important markets, like Europe, Japan, and Asia should be monitored as well. I'm guessing no one is actually wondering about that. There's a feeling in part of the Mac community that I'm presenting market share data to make Apple look bad, and that by focusing solely on market share, I'm ignoring other more relevant information about Apple's relative success in the market place. The first argument is untrue: I simply like hard, cold facts, and market share, unlike "mind share" or "usage share" (at least in the PC market) can accurately be measured. Regarding the second point, this has come up far too often, as I've addressed it repeatedly over the years. Again, market share is not the complete story. And yes, Apple is very successful, even in the PC space, and with its isolationist strategy: It has created a desirable niche brand that attracts millions of users, has thousands of developers, garners an amazing amount of press and public awareness, and brings a heaping serving of technical quality and design to the table. There is nothing wrong with Apple today, for sure. But then, that was never the point of this. You'd think that the highly technical people who love the Mac would appreciate numbers. But when it comes to the Mac, or Apple more generally, people tend toward the emotional side a bit too often. OK, I guess that was a bit of analysis. I'm looking at you, Gustav. (Inside joke. There's no one named Gustav.) Labels: Apple, Mac, market share, PC [ Posted at 10:10 AM | Permalink ]
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