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Apple Reaches 12% Market Share In U.S. Notebooks
bonch writes "Apple's U.S. notebook market share has doubled to 12% after shipping 1.33 million Macs in the quarter. Apple also shipped 8.11 million iPods, topping analyst estimates, for a net income of $472 million. Remember when Apple was dying?" From the article: "The iPod shipments appeared to calm investors worried that growth in that red-hot business was slowing and Apple's results topped what analysts had said was a conservative forecast. Shares of Apple were down some 24 percent since early May. 'Apple looked good,' said Jane Snorek, technology analyst with First American Funds. 'The PC numbers were great, too.'"
Apple might only have 12% of the market share in US Notebooks, but it's the top 12% :)
John
Apple does a great job of making products people want to buy.
With the iPods, they seem to be unstoppable. No matter what other companies offer, people want the iPod + iTunes more. With laptops, they make a sexier product than almost anyone else. Even the die-hard Windows folks I know are buying Apple laptops, running OS X + Windows via BootCamp or via Parallels.
To top it off, they do all this with higher profit margins than any other company. It's no surprise that their market share, and their stock, are both on the rise.
Perhaps, but there are a few counter-points to be made. Take a look at how their stock has performed:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=5y
Notice that every year except 2002, the stock price started accelerating after WWDC. Apple stock, therefore, is usually flat or slightly downward trending for the first half of the year. The stock market is heavily influenced by whatever Jobs' latest reality distortion is.
I would also argue that, in addition to the seasonal fluctuation's effect, Apple stock was highly overvalued at the end of last year on half-baked speculation that apple would somehow conquer the entire PC market because of its move to intel. What we're seeing right now is that unbridled enthusiasm getting reigned in. If the apple desktops sell as well as the macbooks have, I expect we'll see the price jumping up again after August, which of course will dissipate by the end of the year, rinse, lather, repeat.
If you think about it, Apple's laptops really are the top 12%. I've gone through two laptops in twice as many years, and having worked on/with a ridiculous variety of brands & models, I've finally come to realize that all laptops are crap. Not only that, all laptop manufacturers are crap, too.
Except, of course, Apple, and possibly IBM/Lenovo. Apple makes decent machines, only slightly overpriced, and when they break (as practically every laptop I've ever encountered has done within two years of use, some spectacularly so) Apple has a history of going to great lengths to fix their mistakes. Remember the iBooks with faulty motherboards? How many of those did Apple replace with newer models (models with double the RAM and disk space)?
They have their faults, and their mistakes, but by-and-large I'd say Apple is one of the few laptop manufacturers whom I'd trust well enough to buy from.
Oh, and those spectacular failures?Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Mac fan, so much so that I work for Apple (though I am not involved in any way with the notebooks)
The whole notion of Mac overpriced-ness used to be a real issue, and at the higher-ends of Apple's products still is. Performance-wise the MacBook Pro still offers precious little for what some el-cheapo notebook mfg's are doing for the same price. But have yhou taken a look at the MacBook lately?
Let's step back and evaluate what the average user wants. Tech geeks like us may care about whether we're getting an ATI Mobile X1600 vs. an Intel GMA950, because we actually use that bit of performance, but the vast majority of users do not. Throw the average emailing, IM-ing, music-listening user in front of a MacBook Pro vs. a MacBook vs. the fastest Windows laptop in the west and they can't tell the difference in performance.
What they CAN tell is that:
A) The MacBook has a nifty little camera! Beats clipping a monstrosity haphazardly to the top of your LCD (yes I am aware some PC laptops have it, but the majority of casual user-level laptops still do not)
B) It's so small and simple! I have a Toshiba laptop at home, and even though it technically is about the same size as a MacBook Pro, it doesn't feel that way. When I handle a MacBook Pro, it feels smaller, it feels lighter, it feels overall easier to work with. Why? Because it's a fucking rectangle, whereas my Toshiba has plastic flap, hinges, plugs, trims, and other needless protrusions that make it look like a bad prop from a B-sci-fi movie.
C) It's not tacky. Some manufacturers have taken this hint. I'm rather a fan of Dell's new case designs, but a lot of manufacturers (Toshiba, I'm looking at you... or hell, the high-end Dells still have a lesson to learn) are still working under the whole tackiness routine. No, we don't need any fricking chrome trim. No, we don't need an LED on the front showing me EVERY POSSIBLE THING THE MACHINE IS DOING, etc etc. A lot of users are just dying for something simple, and Mac gives you that.
D) The hardware simply works better. To remove the battery from a MacBook I just turn this little knob, and the battery pops out. To remove said battery from my Toshiba I have to flip this little plastic switch on the bottom (which feels very flimsy btw), and then pull this other switch thingy to release the clamp, and ALSO I have to pull on the battery at the same time. Is it especially difficult? No, but the Mac experience is infinitely better. It's the little things about the hardware that counts: I can check my battery life without turning on the machine, there's no lid latch to break, there's no power cord to kill your motherboard with (it does happen a LOT, I know many people who ripped the power connector assembly right from the mobo just by tripping over the power cord), I don't have to pay an arm and leg to get bluetooth... need I continue?
E) MacOS. The average schmoe is sick and tired of being thrown jargon by Windows. They cope with it, but feel more at home in the more intuitive aspects of OSX. Everything works out of the box, and the UI is never cluttered with inane BS (Windows Media Player, step up). For a personal average user, he/she does not have to install ANYTHING to do the things he/she does everyday (except the office suite, which doesn't come with a Mac). Dialogs are verbed and more understandable, each button's purpose and actions are clearly communicated (do you really know what the "OK" button does in Windows?), so it's all quite simple to understand in comparison to Windows' bloated interface. Hell, I know average non-techies who figured out how to change their resolution in MacOS, when they didn't have a clue how to do it in Windows.
Users are not interested in paying for hardware, then software, then more software. The average user wants a full solution that works right from the get-go. They want to use hardware that they barely have to learn, and OS that looks as good as it runs (WinXP's default theme gives me nightmares), and the hip factor helps too ;) Once you roll the "experience" factor in, I would say most Macs are in fact not overpriced. (no defence for the MacBook Pros, they are still quite expensive)
Its vaunted security comes at the price of ease of use, and I think we'll be seeing a lot of people wondering why they can't do on their Mac what they could do on their Dell...
Could you provide an example of something, here? Because this really makes no sense. Give an example of something people can do on a Dell that they can't on a Mac, that is unavailable because of security restrictions in Mac OS (as opposed to the appropriate application simply not being ported yet).
What ease of use has OS X given up for security? I can't think of anything. Have you ever used Mac OS, or are you just saying that because you think it sounds plausible?
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Last time I checked, Microsoft was convicted of being an illegal monopoly, Apple wasn't. Different rules apply to each category.
Nice collection of myths!
There must be an awful lot of Mac fans considering they shipped more than 4.5 million of them this quarter (and it's not a new model).
As anybody who actually goes and runs the numbers finds out, Macs are similar to Dell pricing. Sometimes a little more expensive, often a bit cheaper. Apple simply doesn't sell a bargain basement junk model that Dell will sell you if you want. Most other PC retailers are more expensive than Dell.
Macs tend to stay in operation longer than Windows machines. Macs have higher resale value than Windows machines. Doesn't sound like the entire Mac community is dumping their computers and upgrading at the drop of a hat, does it? Sure, there are some. Those would be the equivalent of the people who buy the highest end Alienware PCs.
Once you roll the "experience" factor in, I would say most Macs are in fact not overpriced. (no defence for the MacBook Pros, they are still quite expensive)
The real issue with Mac Pricing, is the "premium" on the premium versions. Frankly I think the base MacBook and MacBook pro aren't too badly priced. But the jumps for the models up, and lack of customization is baffling.
e.g. I'd like a base macbook with a superdrive, except that I can't. Superdrive is not an option on the base. So I have to move up to the middle model. $200 bucks to move from a combo drive to a superdrive? (Sure it comes with a slight cpu bump, but I don't care about that.)
and the next model up from that? Another $200 for what? 20 mor GB of HD! Ridiculous!! (Oh and its black plastic)
Worse, I'd like to potentially run parallels on it, and would like to start with 1GB of ram on one chip, so that I can upgrade to 2GB down the road easily. Nope can't do it. I have to shell out $500 bucks for 2GB RAM. (Which is itself ridiculous for RAM)
Why isn't 1GB of RAM on one chip an option? (It is with the MacBook Pros, using the same CPUs!!)
Ditto the HD upgrades... $250 for 120GB to upgrade from a $60. That is again, ridiculous. You can get a 60 for ~110, and 120 for around ~200. So the upgrade should cost around ~100, why am I being asked to fork out $250?
The base model at 1100 is pretty decent, but to put in the big HD, 2GB of ram, and a superdrive will run another:
$500 to upgrade to 2GB RAM
$250 to upgrade to 120GB HD
$2oo to upgrade to model with Superdrive
----
$950 bucks
That's easily double what those upgrades are worth.
Well, in the case of Mexico, we actively work to fuck up their politics so that they never recover, and we can keep exploiting them.
But the most significant aspect in many cases is pollution. A big part of the cost savings is that these companies can go someplace they can pollute all they want. When the country becomes more wealthy and the laws change, they pull out, sell most of their equipment for scrap and ship it out of the country so no one can use it, and leave behind a big dirty smoking hole full of pollutants.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That Dell has an X1600? And OS X? And all the niceties of Apple's design? And the same quality display? And keyboard? And I'd like it just as much? And it'll hold its value just as well for when I want to sell it in two years? And it has the same quality support? And I can just take it down to the local Dell store two blocks away if it breaks (yeah right)?
What is the point of all these comparisons? There are so many variables that such things are completely useless. You don't compare a BMW and a Chevy on horsepower, torque, size, and weight alone. I'm not making any value judgments here -- the Dell can be the BMW for all I care -- But my point is there are dozens of issues to make comparisons on, not just the four or five biggest numbers.