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.

Comments

Of course

[DontBeAMoran]

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.

Re:Of course

[tsqr]

I have a new MacBook Pro at work. For my use case, the keyboard and touch bar are mostly irrelevant, as it's connected to a large external monitor, keyboard, and mouse; I have a large and expensive dock that turns the USB-C ports into something actually useful. Same setup at home. But on the rare occasions when I have to use it as a, you know, laptop computer, I have to say that the keyboard is one of the worst ones I've ever come across in 30 years. And the enormous trackpad - even the cheap little Dell I use for Linux has a setting that disables the trackpad while you're typing, so an accidental trackpad touch doesn't send your cursor off to God knows where.

tl;dr: the MBP is a nice computer as long as you can keep the lid closed while you're using it.

Re:Shipments

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Shipments

[hairyfeet]

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.

I'm considering a Surface Laptop

[Hrrrg]

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...

Re:Shipments

[arglebargle_xiv]

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.