PC Market Share, Q2 2010

My gut feeling is that 2010 will be a banner year for Apple and after that they will top off. Why? Between say 2005 and 2009 going with a Mac had some really good reasoning behind it, like iLife, XP malware problems, Vista sucking when it rolled out, and Microsofts lack of direction. At the end of 2009 we got Snow Leopard, which should have been 10.5.9 and not a new OS. We also got Windows 7, and it, IMHO, is every bit as good and in many ways better than OS X, even for consumers. In 2010 we get Windows Live Essentials 2011 which again coupled with Live services wave 4, is as good or better than iLife. Add to that, Apples seemingly mad dash to everything iOS. If you consider Snow Leopard a minor update/patch, we are going on 3 years with out a new version of OS X. I have not heard anything about a new version of iLife or iWork at all. Where are those 6-core CPU/Mac Pro's??? The Mac Pro used to roll out the latest CPU's before PC makers. Apple's focus is on the mobile market. I think they will milk the Mac for a while. I think the trend you are seeing with more Mac's sold last quarter is the result of a "Trendy Macs make me look cool" purchasing phase in its peak or last ghasp. I think Mac sales will drop as Windows 7 becomes more popular and Apple pushes iOS harder. If Mac sales drop they will still continue strong but fall back down somewhat. I cant see continued growth of the Mac at the current rates. I know people that have already moved back from the Mac to Windows 7, several of them to be honest. On the phone side, I cant wait to see what is going on this time next year. Apple's iPhone 4.0 problems could not have come at a worse time. I just read that Android is activating 160,000 hand sets a day, vs 93,000 for iPhone. After iPhone 4.0 love fest dies down those numbers will get worse. I think Windows Phone 7 will be popular, maybe less so than Android/iPhone, but enought to impact iPhone more than Android. 2011 the peak of Apple.

@rr0de: I'm not sure 2011 will be the peak of Apple, though if your predictions play out, it could be the peak of OSX.  Apple seems to be shifting very decidedly into the mobile and device market, away from desktops and full OSes.  And in a weird paradox, I think that would be a very bad thing for Windows users...what would happen to Windows if Microsoft suddenly had no viable competition in the desktop market?  If history is any gauge, it would get very stale indeed.  So I hope Apple turns some attention back on OSX sometime soon.

@moderndislocation: I think the surprising part is the dramatic increase Apple had, not that there is an increase.  Sharp points in growth graphs and sudden jumps aren't logical continuations of anything, in my opinion.  Continued steady growth, outpacing other hardware makers, would have been the logical continuation of their past growth.

But hey, that's just my two cents.  Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Avro,

I disagree. At the rapid clip of adoption and iteration of Android, it's the iPhone's number one threat. It's a threat grows by the day. Considering how many apps are being created, the numbers of avenues to acquire an Android device, the rapid pace in which Android hardware is being upgraded, &  the greater creativity of apps in the Android Market, Apple would be fools to dismiss Android so quickly. Just looking at the Audible App for Android, really shows the strength of the Market.

How is the competition adapting to the iPhone 4 and capitalizing on it's flaws? Samsung UK is giving away free Samsung Galaxy S devices to people fed up with the iPhone 4. That's a clear and present danger to the iPhone ecosystem when folks can be given a phone at no extra charge to replace the iPhone.

Also, the next iterations of Android will attack Apple's core assets, the iTunes ecosystem. That's what FroYo, Gingerbread, and Google Music is all about. By attacking Apple's biggest strengths, you nullify the advantage of the phone. Google knows this. I know that both the music industry and the motion picture industry wants to break Apple's hold on them. Working with Google & the power of Android is a perfect way for them to do so.

So what about OS-X fragmentation. Plenty of people using Tiger and Leopard. How about iOS fragmentation. All those iPhone 1st gen & iPod Touch 1st gen stuck on 3x? Or the jail-breakers stuck on earlier versions? Or those with current or previous gen models that iPhone 4 doesn't work well with. I've taken a performance hit with iOS on my iPod Touch. They really screwed the pooch with iOS. No jail-breaking at all, just stock iOS 4. What really gets me, is how come they held back features or recently added that Android has had for 2 years now? Or features that jail-breakers have proven that older iPhone's and iPod Touch's can do? Fragmentation? Windows XP, Vista, & 7 and Microsoft has had a record quarter. Fragmentation is meaningless.

As for the article?

The idea that we are post PC era is absolute garbage. We are in a second golden age of PC's. The sales numbers do not lie. Over 1 million PC's sold a day. The highest ever in computer history. People are either replacing or adding new machines to their environments. People are mixing and matching Windows, Mac, & Linux. Dual booting between Windows and Mac or Windows and any Flavor of Linux is probably more common than many of us realize.

This idea that PC's are trucks and therefore obsolete is laughable, because the top 10 highest selling automobiles world wide are trucks. The truck is more relevant than ever. I would think the laptop is the sports car. Plenty of portable power and user friendly design. Laptops are getting thin and powerful.

There will be a place for tablets, but the venerable PC is not going away. Not anytime soon. Just walk to your neighborhood computer store and you'll see plenty of folks buying desktops and laptops.

I don't think that Apple is ignoring OS X despite no public mentions of updates or 10.7.

My guess is they will be taking some of the things they have worked on with iOS and move those to OS X.

Resolution Independence for example.   With the massive change in the iphone 3GS and 4 screens for example.  I'm sure the next ipad update will have a "retina" display and that technology will be worked into laptops as well in the near future.

Apple probably has great foundation for dealing with that which can be brought over to 10.7.