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Microsoft Passes Acer To Become Top 5 PC Vendors In the US (venturebeat.com)
During the 3rd Quarter of 2018, Microsoft reportedly broke into the top five list of PC vendors in the U.S. for the first time, thanks to its line of Surface computers, laptops, and tablets. VentureBeat reports: Q3 2018 was flat; it did not continue the growth we saw in the previous quarter. Gartner estimates that worldwide PC shipments increased 0.1 percent to 67.2 million units while IDC counts a 0.9 percent decline to 67.4 million units. Gartner's top five vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer (in that order) while IDC's were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer, and Apple (also in that order). But Gartner also provides a U.S. breakdown every quarter, and Q3 2018 was the first time that Microsoft made an appearance, displacing Acer.
Microsoft is still a far cry from the other players in the top 5, and its shipments were in fact only up slightly by 11,000 units, gaining just 0.1 percentage points (to 4.1 percent market share). Still, Dell and Apple were down, and the overall U.S. market was flat (down some 50,000 units) in Q3 2018, so in that context, Surface sales are doing just fine.
Microsoft is still a far cry from the other players in the top 5, and its shipments were in fact only up slightly by 11,000 units, gaining just 0.1 percentage points (to 4.1 percent market share). Still, Dell and Apple were down, and the overall U.S. market was flat (down some 50,000 units) in Q3 2018, so in that context, Surface sales are doing just fine.
I don't know about the others, but if you follow Apple's hardware releases, there is a simple reason their sales are down.
- Four years since they barely updated the MacBook Air. Very old tech at today's prices. A minuscule CPU speed bump does not equal an update.
- Four years since they updated the Mac mini. Very old tech at today's prices. Can't even upgrade the RAM anymore. A downgrade from the 2012 models, so six years since the last real update.
- Three updates to a useless no-travel low profile keyboard that nobody asked for. This is the primary input method for a laptop and it got butchered because their industrial designer wanted to make the laptop one millimetre thinner. Also, they removed the function keys including the escape key for a stupid and expensive touch bar that, again, nobody asked for.
- Mac Pro trash that nobody asked for. Real pros are asking Apple to bring back the tower Mac Pro, we'll see in a few months if Apple really ditched pros to sell toy phones and tablets instead.
- Expensive Macbook that doesn't have enough ports to be of any use, ditched USB type A ports about five years too early. Very expensive for a low-power CPU.
After all that bullshit, I hope nobody at Apple is questioning why Mac sales are down.
#DeleteFacebook
gartner and IDC don't use shipped numbers as they have no access to those, they base everything off retailer sales. Not sure why you think they aren't selling them. I see Surface devices everywhere nowadays.
I have not seen any surface devices, lots of Mac's and iPads. Your mileage may vary. This is the same company that blew close to 22 billion on Nokia, $2 billion on Kin phone and is finding that they have to give 12 months of Cloud/Clown services to get users hooked on the subscription. All those corporate enterprise licenses get counted as clown sales even if the end users are banned from storing company documents in the clown.
Sometimes we only get the statistics that skew the appearance of a subject.
Heck I bet during the Ford Pinto years there were tons of propaganda on how great the car was, how well it was selling and how safe it was...
Your Average Joe
I have a personal Surface Pro 4 tablet and use for work and personal travel. Rarely do I take it with me around town because most of the time my cell phone and Kindle do just fine.
For work travel, I use it as a second screen for my work laptop using a j5create USB 3.0 wormhole switch USB cable. When I am involved in a network refresh at a remote site, it's nice to have a second monitor, especially for new sites that have no monitors that I can borrow.
For personal travel, I use it to access travel information, surf the internet, and to backup photos.
The Surface Pro tablets are relatively expensive compared to an Apple iPad, which limits sales to people who are willing to spend the money (i.e. business users). Also, until recently, you couldn't get a Surface Pro tablet with LTE. And iPads have been around a lot longer.
Basically, just because you haven't seen a lot of Surface devices doen't mean that they aren't selling well. It's like me saying that I see a lot more people on cell phones than iPads. It doesn't mean that iPads aren't selling, it just means that cell phones are more portable.
Really? Cuz I've been seeing tons of Surfaces, specially in the SMB and medical markets, hell even my local hospital is running Surface units across the board and that place usually takes 3 damn forevers to update anything and still had XP units damn near to the release of 8.1. The reason why they are all grabbing surface is simple, all that third party Windows only software from the diagnostic tools to the billing software all run on Windows, not Apple or Android.
Never underestimate the power of Windows X86 lock in, they weren't competitive before because they really didn't have any products in a tablet form factor that were any good or decently priced but these new Surface units are light and affordable and ez pz for your average nurse of line worker to just carry around tapping in data. Hell I just got done setting up a bunch of Wifi extenders for a doctor that got tired of trying to get all the software her office needs running on iPads so she just shitcanned the whole bunch, now everyone from the receptionist to the RNs to the doc herself are all carrying Surface units and all her software "just works".
There is literally millions of highly specialized programs that simply do not run on any other OS and if MSFT keeps down this route of making them easy to use and affordable? I can see a lot of the companies that sell these programs just telling customers "just get a Surface" instead of wasting all the time and money trying to port and I can't say I blame 'em, as they really are nice light responsive little things and gave me a better experience than the last time I messed with an Android tablet.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm considering buying a Surface Laptop, but I'm reluctant because they are full of glue and irreparable. (Per ifixit.com "The Surface Laptop is not a laptop. It’s a glue-filled monstrosity. There is nothing about it that is upgradable or long-lasting, and it literally can’t be opened without destroying it.")
My current laptop is 8 years old and runs well - i would expect my new laptop to be in use for a similar length of time... The reason I'm considering the surface laptop is they have a taller screen - their screen ratio is 3:2 rather than 16:9 that everyone else (except Apple) uses.
So I am torn... If I buy one, i will need to also buy an extended warranty of at least 4 years...
Adaptable... haha. More like they use their enormous bank balance to keep throwing shit at the wall until it sticks or they get bored and move into something else.
As people have been pointing out since the Microsoft Mouse, MS do pretty good hardware. If only they'd stick to that, their strong point, rather than trying to do software as well, which they really aren't that good at.
That is in fact a way to adapt.
Someone on here said no-one was buying them because they hadn't seen one in public so this must be fake news.
You mean Windows Enterprise?
My company issues Surface tablets instead of laptops these days.
Thats called innovation. Something apple claims but never achieves
why do you find it so hard to accept that the surface line is actually very successful?
Probably because of things like this. And this. And this. And this.
>You mean Windows Enterprise?
I'm. waiting until Windows Enterprise reaches version 1701E
We have been purchasing Surface Pros for the last couple years for some of our executives at work of course there are a lot more HP Elitebooks so this isn't even a surprising turn of events, HP in the top spot and MS finally taking the last spot.
gartner and IDC don't use shipped numbers as they have no access to those, they base everything off retailer sales. Not sure why you think they aren't selling them. I see Surface devices everywhere nowadays.
I have yet to see a Surface device outside of a CBS show.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.