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Apple Devices To Outsell Windows For First Time Ever In 2013

zacharye writes "Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have long been considered the future of computing and a new projection from market research firm Gartner shows just how important the mobile market has become. According to the firm's estimates for 2013, Apple devices will outsell Windows devices for the first time this year. The estimate takes into account sales of Apple's iPhones, iPads and Mac computers as well as desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones powered by Microsoft's various Windows operating systems..."

14 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The King is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does this mean the DOJ will finally pay attention to Apple and their "fair for everyone, especially the consumers, no this isn't an abuse of power or monopolistic tendencies, hey look over there, there is nothing to see here" policies?

  2. Not the whole picture by pcjunky · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mobile phones really skewed things. However if you take things like Andriod into account Apple's share is still quite small. It just that Microsoft has almost no presence in the mobile phone market. Bill would not have let this happen had he still been in charge.

    1. Re:Not the whole picture by dc29A · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bill would not have let this happen had he still been in charge.

      Ah yes, Bill Gates the visionary. Almost missed TCP/IP (had to be begged to implement it) ... and the Internet. Was the SPAM problem supposed to be solved in what? 3 years in 2004? Bill let the whole tablet market slip from his fingers, at least a good 9 years before the iPad.

      He was in the right place at the right time. Nothing more. Definitely not a visionary.

  3. Xbox and Windows CE? by Megor1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did they include Xbox and windows CE devices?

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    Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
  4. It's not so much Apple's superiority. . . by whozatmac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    . . . Microsoft has done this to themselves. Having failed to come up with a compelling mobile space product, they decided to force the half baked mobile OS on desktops, where they had, for better or worse, at least established themselves. No one is buying windows 8 machines that owns any previous windows computer. . . and those who hadn't bought a computer yet are buying tablets and phones and other internet consumption products. Now Microsoft wants to kill of thier segment of the content creation space. It's baffling.

  5. And the Cozy Coupe was the best selling car... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In 2008, the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe was the best selling car in the US. However I don't think Toyota was overly concerned about the competition. Apple devices include things like the iPod. Microsoft's big money maker has always been business licensing. When Apple makes double digit market share in the enterprise arena, this will be news.

    http://jalopnik.com/5282451/little-tikes-cozy-coupe-the-best-selling-car-in-america

  6. Re:Interesting observation because MS != Apple by couchslug · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft offers what it thinks you should have.

    Apple offers what attracts people.

    --
    "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  7. Define "computing" by istartedi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Passively reading news, or tweeting out the occasional 140-character update on your boring life is not "computing" to me. Watching videos isn't computing. Playing games isn't computing, even if it is computationally intensive for the device.

    Call me when people start running spreadsheets on these things, or are using them as their primary development platform.

    I think it would be more fair to say that these devices have surpassed the PC as interactive entertainment devices, as opposed to "computing" devices.

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    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  8. Re:Interesting observation because MS != Apple by DrEldarion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do realize that Jobs was the one who said "people don't know what they want"? Apple is the #1 perpetrator of dictating to users what they "should" want.

  9. Re:The King is dead by jamesh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does this mean the DOJ will finally pay attention to Apple and their "fair for everyone, especially the consumers, no this isn't an abuse of power or monopolistic tendencies, hey look over there, there is nothing to see here" policies?

    If Apple devices have just outsold Microsoft, then it would imply that there is a somewhat decent balance in the marketplace and the word 'monopoly' is probably misplaced here.

  10. It's called "moving the goalposts" by gman003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft "devices" (which apparently means "Windows devices" - mainly laptops, desktops and servers, with a few smartphones and tablets) are being outsold by Apple devices (mainly smartphones, tablets, and laptops, with a handful of desktops and even fewer servers).

    In other news, Ford is outselling Airbus in terms of vehicles sold, and India makes more films than America.

    Not only is there the whole computer-vs-mobile thing (with mobile being a growing market and actual computers having plateaued), but Microsoft itself is pretty new as a hardware manufacturer. They make Surface RT, Surface Pro, two generations of Xbox, the Zune, and a long series of mice and keyboards. Whereas Apple has been making hardware since day 1. So a more fair comparison would be "hardware sold" and "software sold" (not counting OS copies bundled with the hardware). Bet you it ends up with each winning one.

    PS: Doesn't the Xbox count as a "Microsoft device"? TFA doesn't say, but they don't seem to include it. Seems unfair to have "OS X + iOS" versus "Windows" when Microsoft has their own locked-down, walled-garden media-consuming device.

  11. Re:The King is dead by Miamicanes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If Microsoft doesn't back down and quit trying to cripple desktop PCs into second-rate tablets, Apple just might beat Microsoft for new desktop and laptop sales in some future year, too. Especially if PC hardware continues its relentless race to the crap commodity bottom & Apple can resist the urge to do the same with its hardware.

    Don't laugh. Back in 2008. if you told a group of guys with Windows Mobile phones that it would be dead from Microsoft-induced suicide by 2010, you would have gotten laughed at. The original iPhone was a dumbed-down crippled toy by comparison, and Android was just a whispered rumor. Microsoft had a device that was largely dysfunctional for making voice calls, but one hell of a kick-ass pocket laptop with wireless internet access.Then, right around the time they finally started to look like they were learning how to make a phone... they pulled the plug.

    Three years ago, Microsoft crawled from the Vista abyss and gave us Windows 7. The skies parted, the angels sang praises not heard since the midnight release parties of Windows95... then Microsoft threw it all away two years later in the wretched name of Metro.

    Microsoft is proof-positive that corporate insanity (or alzheimer's) is real and exists. They're going to put themselves out of business, then wonder how they could have fallen so far, and so completely, in so little time. And if they don't, it'll only be due to thirdparty developers working tirelessly to give us the Windows we actually *want*.

  12. Re:The King is dead by nzac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Especially if PC hardware continues its relentless race to the crap commodity bottom & Apple can resist the urge to do the same with its hardware.

    The race to the bottom happens because the consumer wants and will buy cheap products. The only reason they will pay more is if the cheap product is not good enough. The problem is that Android and ChromeOS can go far lower than windows can. Future generations of ARM chromebooks are far more of a threat to Microsoft than Apple will ever be.

    The apple brand is too strong for OEMs to make significant sales at that price-point so they need to go lower. If you can go lower than everyone else while still providing an adequate product then you corner 30 to 50 percent of the market. If the race to the bottom is not happening then anti trust laws should be brought out.

  13. Re:The King is dead by Sique · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here, it gets complicated. The main reason is Dalvik, a layer above the kernel itself. From a pure OS point of view, it's a shell, allowing the starting and stopping of applications. At the same time, it's also the only available interface to the kernel. Thus, from an application point of view, it acts like the OS itself. Often, it's called a platform, abstracting the real OS. Google could replace Linux at any time within Andoid, and for the applications, it wouldn't make any difference. That's why you can develop Android apps in the Android SDK on your computer which is neither ARM based as the Android devices the apps will later installed on nor necessarily runs Linux as its OS - Dalvik is presenting a layer against which the apps are built, and which acts the same on any OS it is running on.

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    .sig: Sique *sigh*