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Mac market share in Q1 2009 = 3.36 percent, Apple earnings strong

Apr. 22, 2009 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Apple has announced its earnings for the first calendar quarter of 2009, and while no company is likely recession proof, Apple is certainly recession-resilient. The company posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, which is huge. Mac sales were a much better than expected 2.22 million units, and though that's down a pretty meaningless 3 percent, year over year, it's enough for 3.36 percent worldwide market share. (In the year ago quarter, the Mac accounted for just 3.26 of all PC sales worldwide.)

US market share, of course, is harder to gauge since Apple doesn't break out US numbers explicitly. Looking at IDC (1130 units) and Gartner's (1135) estimated sales figures for the US, Apple's Mac has about 7.49 percent market share in the US. That's a bit more vague of an estimate, of course, but it seems reasonable.

Either way, the Mac's in great shape, despite the economy.

More impressive, perhaps, is the iPhone. Sales of the iPhone more than doubled year over year, with Apple selling 3.79 million units (according to AT&T, 1.6 million of them in the US).

iPod sales were up an inconsequential 3 percent, suggesting that the new iPod shuffle hasn't been a fast seller. It's rare for Apple to completely replace an iPod model in the first quarter (they usually go after the full lineup each September) but it doesn't look like it made much of a difference. Maybe the next shuffle could be bigger and have a real UI.

Discuss this Article 90

tayme
on Apr 23, 2009
"facts hurt and you only want to see what your own prejudices are willing to allow." That is funny coming from somebody as biased as you on this subject. Thanks for the chuckle. Here's a little fact for you to chew on - http://gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=939015 --tayme
mikegalos@msn.com
on Apr 23, 2009
tayme, Thanks for the link. Chewing on it and plugging in the numbers for Apple (who are part of the "other" since they're not in the Top 5) gives the following (in order of change in share): Acer got an additional 3.4% of the market to bring them to 13.0% HP got an additional 1.7% of the market to bring them to 19.8% Toshiba got an additional 1.2% of the market to bring them to 5.5% Apple got an additional 0.1% of the market to bring them to 3.3% Lenovo lost 0.1% of the market to bring them to 6.6% Dell lost 1.6% of the market to bring them to 13.1% All the other small players combined (after taking Apple out) lost 4.7% of the market to bring them to 38.7% Summarizing: Big winner (share growth over 2%) - Acer Winners (share growth between 1 and 2%) - HP and Toshiba Neutral (less than 1% share change either way) - Apple and Lenovo Loser (share loss between 1 and 2%) - Dell Big losers (share loss over 2%) - unnamed smaller vendors
lotsamystuff
on Apr 23, 2009
"This is a lot of gloating for quarterly performance that's exactly mediocre." Let me explain it to you again, Mikey. Point One: Best non-holiday quarter EVER for Apple Inc. Hardly "mediocre". Point Two: Market share up (if slightly). Apparently Microsoft's ads aren't having the desired effect. Point Three: 29 BILLION in cash reserves (exceeding that of even your favorite company, Microsoft). Hardly "mediocre". Point Four: 123% unit growth in iPhones. Hardly "mediocre". Point Five: 3% unit growth in iPods (a so-called "luxury item" that by WinJihadist reckoning should be languishing in this economy). Point Six: Gross margins UP. Hardly "mediocre" performance. I appreciate what you're trying to do, Mikey. You're taking one small aspect of their business and pointing out that it was down approximately the same level as the rest of the industry. More rational minds are looking at the performance of the company as a whole, and celebrating its success in the face of critics who are constantly predicting its doom (I'm looking at you, "Waethorn") and pundits who report numbers (I'm looking at you, "Mac sales down 6% Thurrot") that don't exist. I'm sure a self-professed brilliant mind like yours can understand, Mikey. If not, please pull your bearded head out of your a$$ and take a look at reality, not the strawman you've so inelegantly set up.
DRWAM
on Apr 23, 2009
What's up with those 'nettops' with ATOM processors? How long have they been on the market?
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"What's up with those 'nettops' with ATOM processors? How long have they been on the market?" About 8 months now.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Apr 23, 2009
lotsa The post is "Mac market share in Q1 2009" and while you may think the Macintosh is a "small aspect of their business", it IS what we are discussing. Changing the subject to profit margins on consumer electronics and cash reserves may make you feel better but the on-topic data on personal computer sales is simple. Acer had a great quarter, HP and Toshiba had good quarters, Apple was flat. While they did no worse than the average personal computer vendor they also did no better.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"Best non-holiday quarter EVER for Apple Inc." Does that include when they WEREN'T "Apple Inc."? @losta: iPod and iPhone sales don't figure into a discussion of PC marketshare, sorry to say. "More rational minds are looking at the performance of the company as a whole, and celebrating its success in the face of critics who are constantly predicting its doom" Show me where in this conversation where I said that Apple is failing. They aren't, OBVIOUSLY. You and tayme are celebrating good news that is nothing more than a PR campaign to make mediocre business success in a recession look like it's something exciting, when in fact there are bigger winners than Apple that deserve a more congratulatory response (I'm waiting). When I look at the numbers here, the only real success for Apple is in it's CE line. Mac sales are practically flat. You can keep grasping at those straws though. Apple: "YAY! We're not going under! Let's have a party!" :P
slimshadey
on Apr 23, 2009
"There's a lot of netbook-class convertible Atom-based UMPC/Tablet PC's coming too so the touch-based stuff in the Origami software would be awesome on those systems." Microsoft must move there very fast. If the rumors of Apple coming out with a new device this year, that uses a 10inch screen are true the MS should get there now. The Apple device, if true, will probably be a iTouch like device with a bigger screen and more powerful hardware, basically a big touch pad. Which IMHO is a way better way to work with a device that has a 10inch or less size screen. My #1 complaint about netbooks are the small keyboards. They are just not usable for any kind of real work, and so the device is relegated to something like a big iTouch (usage/app wise), why not just use touch as your main input method and ditch the keyboard.
BizarroMikeGalos
on Apr 23, 2009
@Tayme, @Lotsa - I agree with you completely. Sorry, my bad.
chuckb84
on Apr 23, 2009
"This is a lot of gloating for quarterly performance that's exactly mediocre" Hmm. Stocks up 42% this quarter. I don't think your opinion is shared by many.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Apr 23, 2009
chuck And trying to change the subject to stock price doesn't change the market share numbers. They're still flat.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Apr 23, 2009
slimshady "Microsoft must move there very fast." is fairly confusing. If Apple does decide to make a UMPC Origami clone (an Applegami?) then they're playing catch up to a product niche Microsoft created three years ago. You might also note that Windows 7 runs well on low power devices like netbooks and has great touch support right out of the box.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
@slimbo: A 10" screen with nothing but touch capabilities is a dead weight IMO, especially if it isn't a full-featured computer. Maximum size for a touch-only device (that's meant to be carried) should be 7". I like the 7" Viliv S5 that was recently introduced. I'd rather see a slide-out hardware keyboard for it, but whatever. The keyboard on the EeePC 1000HE is a fair size too. It has one of the new "chicklet"-style keyboards but it doesn't feel like Jell-O like the Macbook ones (the keys have almost no side-to-side wiggle). I've typed several paragraphs on it and it doesn't feel any more cramped than a keyboard on a 15" notebook. I'd rather have a convertible UMPC with touch/stylus capabilities like the Gigabyte T1028 myself (OneNote is awesome!), but the EeePC 1000HE has an oh-so-tempting 9.5 hour battery that's hard to give up too. The 1000HE also has a multi-touch trackpad which will be more important when Windows 7 ships (7 has native support of multi-touch). I don't think I'd miss the multi-touch trackpad if I had a touch-capable screen though.
tayme
on Apr 23, 2009
@mikegalos - No problem for the link. Like I said in my first post - "Both companies [Apple and Microsoft] will still be in existence for a long time to come." Both are successful and for one to succeed does not mean the other must fail. Both Windows and OS X have a place in the market. Windows kicks everybody's butt in the enterprise market and OS X is preferred by video production houses. Lets move on now, shall we. These arguments are stale and those that are too blind to see value in both OSes and companies are simple minded. --tayme
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
Whoops, forgot links: Gigabyte T1028: http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Notebook/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=... Asus EeePC 1000HE: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=Ues16Gw2OcqSjUNt Oh and here's something that's very interesting too. I'd like to see the specs bumped up to a 1GHz CPU and maybe 1GB of RAM for this. I think THIS would be the target hardware for Windows 7 Starter Edition (and it'd be an amazing little piece of gear to have too): http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Notebook/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=...
panache1023
on Apr 23, 2009
MikeGalos, The subject of the post is "Mac market share in Q1 2009 = 3.36 percent, Apple earnings strong" It is also very relevant to mention iPod / iPhone and any other Apple products if it is directly related to the "earnings strong" part of the subject. Plus, marketshare alone has nothing to do with health a business or product. If I was running a company and I was earning 2B in profit with 10% market share vs a competitor making 1.5B with 90%, I'd rather have the 10%... just hypothetical numbers to prove a point that a lot of people here don't seem to take into consideration.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Apr 23, 2009
tayme " Lets move on now, shall we. " Actually, I was enjoying the fact that, for once, the discussion was at least relatively close to being on topic and not full of people's vanity fiction.
lotsamystuff
on Apr 23, 2009
Mikegalos: You are the one exclusively focusing on market share. I'm responding (and, yes, celebrating) the totality of Paul's actual blog post, which leads with: "Apple has announced its earnings for the first calendar quarter of 2009, and while no company is likely recession proof, Apple is certainly recession-resilient." Huh. No mention of a sales drop there. You, OTOH, focused on a sales drop of one segment of Apple's product line (one that is in line with industry averages) and a minute market share increase, completely ignoring the rest of the news, which was overwhelmingly positive. How clever. See, "mikegalos", I don't buy your premise, so I don't buy the bit. I'll give you your due, though...your argumentative techniques are impressive, if somewhat predictable. Nice try.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
@mike: One bad thing about 7 Starter Edition is that it doesn't include Mobility Center. I think that's a mistake considering that MID's would be a good target hardware market for Starter. Origami 2.0 has a hard link for Mobility Center (the battery icon in Origami), so not having that feature available seems awkward. Does Starter have the touch/tablet support too, or is that something that's only going to be in "Premium" versions of 7? I know it's not in Vista Starter.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"I was running a company and I was earning 2B in profit with 10% market share vs a competitor making 1.5B with 90%, I'd rather have the 10%" That's only relevent in a market that isn't saturated. The PC industry is saturated, so growth for a company is hard. For instance, Acer is growing, but they're also taking a hit on margins in the process, due to the popularity of their netbooks and cheap notebooks. I get partner price lists from them, and the prices go something like this: SRP: $829, Street Price: $799, Dealer cost: $789. How can a reseller really deal with a pricing system like that? I mean, making $10 profit for a reseller is ludicrous. That's what their partner price lists are like though. And then you have to figure in distributor costs too. Some sell higher than what Acer suggest the cost should be. By the time you buy their systems, your profit margin is gone. Offering over-inflated add-ons like mice, software, and extended warranties is the only way most resellers can make money on Acer systems. That, and refurb'ed models, which Acer is in abundance of. Acer only sells in "the channel", but they're only good for VAR's, not straight off-the-shelf resellers. In an industry that isn't that competitive, you could argue that growth would be easy. That isn't so here though.
Mum
on Apr 23, 2009
"You might also note that Windows 7 runs well on low power devices like netbooks and has great touch support right out of the box." Windows 7 Starter Edition that's the version most likely to be included on netbooks only runs 3 applications at once. So it's useless.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"Windows 7 Starter Edition that's the version most likely to be included on netbooks only runs 3 applications at once." Sorry but that's wrong. Starter Edition will be allowed on limited hardware. Microsoft is pushing manufacturers to offer Home Premium on standard netbooks, which be all the more powerful by the time Windows 7 RTM's. The 3 app limit only affects you if you actually plan on doing heavy multitasking on a system, and the underpowered netbooks that Starter is designed for don't even have the power to do that anyway, so Microsoft is effectively saving you the headache. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=844
panache1023
on Apr 23, 2009
Waethorn, You are missing my point. As a business man, is your concern increasing your MARKETSHARE, or your PROFIT? That's my point and it's something that gets missed here often talking about MS marketshare vs Apple marketshare. If a day ever comes that Apple makes the same revenue and / or profit as MS, do you really think it would matter on what marketshare it was done? Would the Apple shareholders say, "well, we don't have the same marketshare as MS so we're not happy even though the company is doing well and making record profits"? I doubt it. I'm sure now someone will continue to miss the point.
chipwinter
on Apr 23, 2009
After Apple's good quarter, I'm hoping for some good numbers from Microsoft today. They seem to have been on a monopoly defense strategy so far this decade, rather than a growth strategy.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"As a business man, is your concern increasing your MARKETSHARE, or your PROFIT?" As a business man, you have to be adaptable to market conditions, which your argument doesn't appear to be. Apple's marketshare is flat, showing that they have no inertia. That's not exactly good in a recession. What they should be doing is scrambling to get more marketshare so that when the recession improves, they'll have a growing customer base. If they leveraged their brand loyalty, they would see that those customers would then be more likely to spend more money when salaries improve. They just aren't trying though. Instead they're employing their elitist persona towards market share, just as they impose it on their customer (and non-customer) base.
DRWAM
on Apr 23, 2009
Well Wae, I was thinking the same thing. Apple can always raise their prices after the recession is over, and they have locked in more market share. This seems to be the strategy of several consumer device makers, however, I don't know if it's working.
Ocean
on Apr 23, 2009
Those trying to spin this to be something bad for Apple are like those http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/24/obama-at-50-50/ http://dancirucci.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-poll-numbers-tumbling.html trying to spin the presidents numbers from "high" to "tumbling".
DRWAM
on Apr 23, 2009
I would follow with that I understand the point that if it ain't broken, then don't fix it, but then there's an ounce of prevention thingy too, not to mention some compassion for those that can't afford good quality. Apple has been using the same business plan, while just adding more devices. It's working, but perhaps there is room for improvement. I guess we will see next quarter.
tayme
on Apr 23, 2009
@mikegalos - My saying, "Lets move on now, shall we." is meant to say, "Move on from petty arguments about sales, marketshare, etc. and discuss technology, like this and Paul's other blogs used to focus on. But if you wish to continue being petty, that is fine with me. --tayme
LC21
on Apr 23, 2009
Waethorn: Apple doesn't impose anything on anyone. You walk into an Apple store, you walk out. You buy something, you don't. Consumer choice. You buy a MacBook or you walk to Best Buy and grab an HP. Whatever. Employing their "elitist" persona? What the hell does that mean? Consumers aren't stupid. Why do you think they are? Does Lexus have an "elitist" persona? Does Range Rover? Or is it only Apple? I own a MacBook because I damn well want to. What the hell do you care?
chuckb84
on Apr 23, 2009
"MikeGalos, The subject of the post is "Mac market share in Q1 2009 = 3.36 percent, Apple earnings strong" It is also very relevant to mention iPod / iPhone and any other Apple products if it is directly related to the "earnings strong" part of the subject. Plus, marketshare alone has nothing to do with health a business or product. If I was running a company and I was earning 2B in profit with 10% market share vs a competitor making 1.5B with 90%, I'd rather have the 10%... just hypothetical numbers to prove a point that a lot of people here don't seem to take into consideration." Right. And Mike's own post mentions "quarterly performance" which is a broader topic than marketshare. And, of course, Apple has doubled their marketshare since 2004, when Paul pronounced them doomed.
chuckb84
on Apr 23, 2009
"Actually, I was enjoying the fact that, for once, the discussion was at least relatively close to being on topic and not full of people's vanity fiction." So am I. Now, on that topic, you are, per the usual, cherry-picking the numbers you like and ignoring the ones you don't, just as Paul does. Apple marketshare has doubled in 5 years and declined a couple of % in one quarter, and that's a quarter in which most "growth" has come from very low margin netbooks. Which is more important, doubling in 5 years, or a 3% change in the worst market since the depression? I'm happy to discuss BOTH, but you don't get to pick just the one that supports your position, while ignoring the data that contradicts it. That's intellectually dishonest, and you know it. On this marketshare uber alles mania: Go check the latest number for Nokia and Sony Eriksson smartphones and ask them how much they're enjoying their "marketshare" as they lose billions. Focussing on that one number is stupid. In the end, businesses make money or die, so profitability is important.
panache1023
on Apr 23, 2009
Waethorn, Again you miss the point....even in your own example, gaining marketshare was nothing more than a way to increase profits. The end goal of running a business is making money. If marketshare is the way to do it, then that is what you do. If you can make the same, or money than a competitor that has more marketshare, then you are ahead of the game. Money (profits and earnings), not marketshare, determines the health of a company.
slimshadey
on Apr 23, 2009
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10224929-56.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksA... Its about profit.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"The end goal of running a business is making money." Margins aren't the only way to get there though. Do you run a business?
panache1023
on Apr 23, 2009
"Do you run a business?" Nope, not yet. But that has nothing to do with the fact that profits are what a business is (supposed to be) about. You are for some reason trying to make a point on HOW to get those profits...and it seems like you're trying to tie that in to the marketshare POV. But that bottom line is that the bottom line is what ultimately matters, not the marketshare.
DRWAM
on Apr 23, 2009
Yep, you can sell low volume and high margin as well as low margin and high volume. MS seems to sell high margin and high volume on Windows and Office. Whatever works keeps going, but sometimes the game changes. Apple has yet to see it change lately. i hope it's sustainable.
Waethorn
on Apr 23, 2009
"Apple has yet to see it change lately. i hope it's sustainable." That's my argument actually. Apple can't assume that their current method of maximizing profits will be sustainable while continuing to ignore other players that are gaining marketshare, especially considering that we've seen flat growth from them in the last year. Businesses succeed by growing. Let me put it another way: the population is growing with or without Apple. Apple isn't adapting to that. That's a lost customer count that they aren't tapping. If I were a shareholder, I'd be angry that they aren't innovating enough to grow their business (looking at the computer side of the business).
DRWAM
on Apr 23, 2009
What made Apple lose it's large market share that it had in the 80's? Was it MS and cheaper PC's, while it stayed with it's high margins?
panache1023
on Apr 23, 2009
Waethorn, You have finally made your point. However, what you are failing to realize, mostly because it seems like you are in denial, is that Apple does not seem to worry or care (at least as of yet) about the low priced, low margin market that the PC dominates. I hate to use the same analogy to cars, but you are saying something similar to Porsche or Ferrari having lost customer counts because the population is growing with or without them. The Ferrari and the Scion, for example, don't exactly compete in the same market. Mac and ASUS netbooks don't really compete in the same market.

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