"Market Share" "Installed Base" and Consumer Electronics

redrum writes "Analysts and reporters like to talk about market share statistics, but the conclusions they draw are often misleading, RDM reports. Market Share Myth 2007: iPod vs Zune and Mac vs PC takes a look at how numbers are used to paint grossly inaccurate portrayals of the market share of the Zune among iPods, and alternatively the Mac among PCs. A follow up article, Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC demonstrates how the conventional wisdom of market share reporting can be turned upside down by simply comparing what vendors actually sell. An eye opening, in depth look at the real numbers behind PCs, music players, and console games."

Comments

Most interesting part

[proberts]

The most interesting part of both articles was:

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In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.

Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple's 2% of the PC market doesn't seem so small anymore.

Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft's total $3.4 billion in profit.
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Now, I don't know why he chose only the fourth quarter, but it's going to make me go back and look at the numbers for 2004-2006, because if that's a trend it's a very interesting one.

Paul

Re:Who are YOU?

[crmarvin42]

DId you visit the site at all? I'll grant you that all of his articles are about apple so to someone predisposed to seeing astrotufers, his site would appear that way. My question is, "So what?" followed by "Why such hostility?" Based upon your vehemence, I get the impression that you have something invested in this debate. As long as you RTFA with a skeptical eye, you can still get some usefull information. The point of the article was't "Zune's suck" but that "Market research numbers are BS that can be, and often are, manipulated by analysts to say what every the analyst wants, and here is how!" As to the last line of your post:

Keep drinking your sugar water, you cultist freak. While you suck on pop music and network television, the rest of us will be changing the world.

How exactly are you changing the world by posting vitriolic, knee jerk responses to an article that attempts to bring clarity to a debate that probably won't be significantly effected by your post, or the article you are refering to in the first place? The dueling analysts already know how the data can be manipulated because they are the ones doing the manipulating. Also, what on EARTH does pop music and network television have to do with anything? Neither of them were mentioned in the article, the post on slashdot or any of the responses to the post that I'v read as of the time of my post.

Ahhh, atribution.

[twitter]

Sorry guys, the "Pro-Microsoft Press" is as much a straw-man shibboleth as "Main Stream Media's Liberal Bias". Give me a break! How many analysts out there saw the Zunes Microsoft unveiled last fall and actually predicted a success?

Shibboleth, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Straw man, I understand but did not see one in the article. They were careful to attribute the source of pro-Zune/M$ buzz to several very misleading stories by NPD and Steve Ballmer. They then flay those stories to show how they are misleading.

do we really need a pro-mac blog to provide a multi-part essay on why the Zune is not a success?

Sure, Zune tanked but that's in part because of bloggers tweezing reality from BS. Microsoft made a second rate device and tried to push it as "the best ever" and likely to succeed because of M$'s usual market might. When it did not sell because everyone knew it was a turd, they made up numbers to say it was selling. Because of the net, Zune has the reputation and sales it deserves.

roughly drafted

[zyzko]

Can we please have an own category for roughly drafted stories?

They are sometimes interesting but for the most part I would like to ignore them for being outright false and so strongly biased that they smell like rotten apple for miles.

Re:Not real sales

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

so, by your reasoning MS Windows isn't one of the most "sold" pieces of software ever ?

but it still generates revenue, and for most, this is what counts. specially for shareholders.