Mac Q1 2010 PC Market Share = 3.6 Percent

This is an interesting note from the conference call: "sales of iPod touch very strong, units grew 66% year over year" Why doesn't someone produce a Android device without the phone component? Windows Phone 7 should do that too, assuming they get traction with developers.

It's going to be interesting to see how these numbers change when the full impact of iPad starts to add to the number of Apple computers out there. I suppose Paul will not include those as he will doggedly make a differential between iPads and Macs, even though they are both Apple computers.

Any numbers on hackintosh market share?

Ocean: Worldwide market share numbers are not "useless." Apple sells its products all over the world. Apple has pretty consistently grown its share of the PC market, both in the US (which is very hard to measure, as Apple does not break out US-only sales) and worldwide.

I wonder if Apple's revenue can beat Microsoft's tomorrow. With only 3.5% of the world's marketshare, that would be amazing.

rr0de74, I'm not picking anything out of anything. I calculate Mac market share every quarter. I've done this for years. I'll write a news story in the morning about Apple's earnings, which are indeed great. The company is on a roll, no doubt about it.

1. Want to sell your old iPhone? 2. If worldwide market-share numbers are not useless, at least tell us what good they are. When you see "3.6%" in the subject line, you tend to think bad, not good. That number in no way is reflective of Apples performance, its reputation, nor it's influence in the spheres it operates in.

What I find most interesting is that the Mac market share still grew despite a strong Window 7 showing. I think it was a forgone conclusion PC sales would spike with the generally well received release of Windows 7. Many thought this would hurt Apple, but it seems to have no real effect.

By the way, I should also add that this isn't' a measurement of "Apple." It's a measurement of the Mac, or "of Apple's PCs." Apple is doing great in virtually every market it competes in, and obviously the iPhone is huge. "Meaning" is a different thing, a different conversation. These are just numbers.

Does Apple break out the iPod Touch vs other models in any of its numbers? I cant see anyone buying anything but a Touch nowdays if you are looking for a portable music player. I carried one for long time but replaced it with my Droid. Also, I wonder when we'll see a data only iPhone/iPod Touch like the iPad. If you could get a family data plan, like $30 a month then $10 for each additional device, I can see having everything with ubiquitous 3g data. Picked up my iPod Touch today after not using it for a while.(use one in the car to drive movies to a dual screen dvd player for the kids. Awesome btw. Ditch the discs) After using the iPad this thing seems tiny. Though it does remind me how much more polished the iPhone OS is than Android.

"I should also add that this isn't' a measurement of "Apple." It's a measurement of the Mac, or "of Apple's PCs." Is my hackintosh a Apple PC? I know in the grand scheme of things the numbers probably are not that much, but there are ALOT of hackintoshs in the wild, and the Osx86 community hase grown immensely. I have always wondered what percentage they make up.

I hear ya Paul. When I eventually upgrade my 16GB iPhone 3G [ the wife has a 3GS], I'll probably give the old 3G to my oldest daughter to use as an iPod, rather than sell it on Craig's list. [Unless I can get enough for it on Craig's List to pay for a bigger iPod Touch. I didn't even think about that until now, so thanks for your thought provoking posts]. Doc

Math is hard, Mike. :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36667769/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_... If Apple only sold these dream making machines internationally, this never would have happened.

"Who said this?" He is preemptively answering the question. That comes reading Paul for years now and seeing the arguments made by the Apple camp. The ensuing discussion ramps up and starts to discuss and argue about how the statistics are being interpreted. Thin skins of Mac fans revealed again. Repeat in three more months after the next quarterly results are released.

"scarax said:

Is it more a measure of Mac OS X versus Windows X market share?"

It's a little more than that. Regardless what anyone thinks the number means, isn't this more of a measurement of Hardware Sold that runs Mac OS  versus Hardware Sold that runs Windows OS (regardless of version)? Paul compares "Apple" to "PC industry". I won't argue numbers because that is what Apple is, a 3% share of the worldwide PC market.

But isn't this like comparing marketshare of Ford to that of every other car manufacturer combined?

It would be interesting to see "Apple" market share compared to "Dell" or "HP" and not "PC industry". It's not Paul's job to do that, but it would be cool if someone has a link?

"Its all its ever been here on this blog.  A way to say Windows is better than OS X, or Microsoft is better than Apple.  Seriously do you think its about anything else....here at the Winsupersite?"

Try saying Windows is better at Macworld or TUAW.

Honestly, WINsupersite. Really folks? REALLY?

More important to some (like me) is Apples share price performance which is about the best there is in terms of large cap tech companies over the past few years. Take a look at a 5 year chart and compare AAPL, MSFT and SPY. Now those are some numbers.

I see Apple is catching MSFT in market cap as well. Something I never thought I'd see.

@rr0de74 "they are just raw numbers"

I think Paul said that already.  I think they're interesting numbers, and I suppose that it's not Apple against all other PC's, it's Mac against all other PC's which is the point I believe.  Sounds like they did well considering the current economic conditions.  

Congratulations to Apple on another great quarter.

To all of you people ranting that worldwide numbers are useless or skewed or whatever...please ask Apple to break out their sales figure by state, country, continent, hemisphere...whatever way you slice it, there are more Windows PCs than Macs. Don't you get that? Does it matter, no...not really. My own house has 3 Macs and a Windows PC...along with 2 Linux machines.

--tayme

"But isn't this like comparing marketshare of Ford to that of every other car manufacturer combined?"

Exactly.

I do agree with Paul's statements the other day about consumer PC purchasing being more than corporate purchasing.

The last two places I have worked (over 10 years) have both moved to Thin clients (Wyse) hitting either Terminal servers or VDI's.  At my current job we have exactly 1 Dell desktop left in the company that a user sits at.  The other 2500 or so users are now either VDI or TS.  There are maybe 20 users that have a Windows Laptop....maybe?

Consumers are fueling PC growth, and a lot of that has to do with much lower prices for powerful devices compared to say 5 years ago.

So. Obviously, I knew going into this post there was going to be a lot of silliness, gnashing of teeth, etc. The Apple folks love success, and don't like small numbers. I don't want to turn this into a weird partisan debate. But people forget, I guess, that I've owned (and own) numerous Apple products over the years, and have never done the trendy "Paul experiments with Mac OS X for xx weeks to figure out what the big deal is" thing. I've been doing that for ten years. It's not an experiment. I use their stuff. (Right now, I have two Macbooks, three AirPort Expresses, an Apple TV--used regularly, two iPhones (one a remote), at least four iPods, and so on.) Apple does some stuff really well, they just do. (And by the way, read my Apple product reviews. I bet the average score is far higher than you imagine it to be. My God! It's WINsupersite after all. the guy is biased!!) OK. Meanwhile, I'm blasting Microsoft for slave labor in China. Please feel free to disregard anything that doesn't match your opinion and preconceptions. Looking at just market share: Apple loves to tout market share, but only when it benefits them. You have to think--no, no, you have know--that if Apple had captured 10 percent of the US market for PCs, using any possible metric, they would have shouted that loud and clear. They love market share. Love it. But only when it makes them look good. So you hear about the iPhone, the iPod, the iTunes Store, the Apps Store, on and on and on, and you hear about it regardless of what the event is. In fact, an Apple event can't start with some update of this kind. But not about the Mac, not ever. Look it up. With regards to the people who are Apple oriented and see things through Apple-colored glasses, no, I am not measuring Apple against every other PC maker combined, against Microsoft, or against the PC market as a whole. Apple is just one of many PC makers. They sell xxx number of computers. This is compared against the other PC makers, just as any other single PC maker is compared against the others. It's not anti-Apple, it's how things are measured. In this past quarter, HP sold 15.45 million PCs. Acer sold 11.4 million, Dell - 10.35 million, Lenovo 7 million, ASUS and Toshiba both sold 4.6 million, and Apple sold almost 3 million. (There could be PC makers ahead of Apple there; we only get the top five.) So that's where they fall in the scheme of things ... in the PC market. So why do I write about this HERE? After all, this is a Windows site, right. Clearly, I'm out to make Apple look bad at all costs. Actually, I just do it here because this is my blog. I previously wrote about this stuff at my Internet Nexus site, which I ran for several years as a blog oriented towards my non-Microsoft investigations. But Penton asked if I could keep it all on the SuperSIte, so I moved the blog, and at that time I pulled in my Apple, Google, Mozilla, whatever articles from Connected Home and elsewhere and started the "Alt.Windows' section on the SuperSite. It's not a conspiracy. It's just that the SuperSite is now the center of what I do, and where you can find what I write. Sorry it's not more controversial than that. Which brings me to the whole Apple "thing." This isn't a shot against Apple the company, Apple the media darling, Apple the company you love and respect. It's just a measurement of how the Mac is doing compared against its many rivals in the PC market. Apple continues to be very, very successful on a wide range of measures. This post, this figure, has nothing to do with any of that. It's just the number of PCs they sell, expressed as a percentage of the wider industry. So there's a lengthy and completely unnecessary justification. I won't do that again, but I'd just ask any of you Apple fans/apologists/whatever mean words there are out there to just say "enthusiasts" to just not be so thin skinned. There are ways to measure success. I'm just measuring market share, and again this is something I've been doing for several years. Apple is successful, relax.

This really just proves a couple of points. For Apple to win, Microsoft doesn't have to lose. Nor does any of the PC industry partners have to lose. Even with the over 1 billion or so computer users world wide, there are over 5 billion people around the world without a PC. PC's also die over time and have to be replaced. So nobody really has to lose. Apple can keep doing it's thing with 3 percent the world market. It's pretty much the status quo. Windows rules the roost, Apple does what it does, & Linux/Unix variants round out the bottom.

I think people still have this Zero Sum game mentality when it comes to Windows, OS-X, & Linux. It's not a zero sum game. All of them can play, do very well, &  coexist. The numbers may fluctuate, but it's not much of a difference vs 5 years ago. There maybe more computer users but the positions are pretty similar.

Instead of competition, the three major OSes just really serve as a quality check & warning against each other. I wonder if Google's Android on tablet's or Chrome OS netbooks make any change or impact?

I agree Apple loves Market share, so they have no problem waving the flag when its MP3 player vs MP3 player.  However that is easy to compare, because a device from any vendor can do the same thing....play any and all music/video.

If  Apple sold computers that only ran Windows (OS X did not exist) then you could compare them to rest or they would just be in the list some place like the others.

Since they are the only computers that can run OS X, (100% market share) it is tough to compare them equally.

"For Apple to win, Microsoft doesn't have to lose. "

Exactly what Job's said once.  Apple for the most ignores the corporate world, even when they do try to integrate it fails IMHO.  We have about 50 mac users and a OS X server, but we have constant AD integration problems.  I am sure in a pure OS X server/client small shop full of marketing types OS X is rock solid.  In mains stream corporate world Microsoft is king.

They both are very successful companies and I dont think that is going to change for either any time soon.  I dont think Google will ever take away leadership of either of Apple's or Microsoft core products when it come to market share.  Android is good but its echo system is a wreck.