There’s the old chestnut that Apple has a mere couple of percent of the market (as if a couple percent of multiple millions is something to sneeze at). We’ve also known for some time now that laptops are fast becoming the choice of both home and business users. Given that trend, Apple now capturing 17.6% of the laptop market in the US is not too shabby.
While they’re only the third strongest seller of computers in general, nearly one out of five laptops out there have that signature Apple logo riding the back of the display. When you think about it, Apple’s laptop offerings are, dare I say, quite common. It’s also an homage to the masterful transition to Intel chips. Where would Apple’s laptop business be if PowerPC chips still powered them? In the toilet.
I’m not hating on the PowerPC, but towards the end, all the real development was in the desktops. The Powerbook became completely stagnant, hovering right around 1.5 GHz using G4 chips. We’re finally seeing great performance back in laptops which used to be Apple’s strength, back in the day of the Pismo. Thinking back on what happened with the entire G4 line of Powerbooks, it simply slowly died over time. The MacBooks are real performers and I hope we see this trend continue.
Isn't this about retail sales, so the real market share is lower (ie. it excludes Dell).
We all know that Apple's machines, while competitive for the features they offer, are higher end. They cater to the higher end of the market and don't offer the $299 products that, say, Dell does.
What I would like to see is some kind of analysis of Apple's market share in the segments for which it sells products, not the whole industry. I'll bet the market share among desktops and notebooks in the range Apple makes is seriously higher than the numbers we usually get.
No, these numbers include mail order and retail, or so I've heard. Apple is really on a groth spurt, and considering the alternatives (XP/Vista/Linux) it's not suprising why, no one offers a more seamless computing experience, even if a thrifty buyer is still better off with a PC of some sort.
Anecdotal evidence on campus weighs heavily in favour of MacBooks.