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It Was Flat Sales That Helped Microsoft Become America's #5 PC Maker (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
Microsoft was the fifth-biggest PC maker in the U.S. in the third quarter of this year, according to industry advisory firm Gartner. The top spot in the U.S. belongs to HP, with about 4.5 million machines sold, ahead of Dell at 3.8 million, Lenovo at 2.3 million, and Apple at 2 million. The gap between fourth and fifth is pretty big -- Microsoft sold only 0.6 million Surface devices last quarter -- but it suggests that Microsoft's PC division is heading in the right direction, with sales 1.9 percent higher than the same quarter last year. The company pushed down to sixth place was Acer. The current quarter should be better still; the Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and Surface Studio have all been given hardware refreshes which, when combined with the always-busy holiday season, should stimulate higher sales.
Globally, both Gartner and IDC reported a flat PC market (up 0.1 percent in Gartner's view, down 0.9 percent in IDC's), after the previous quarter's modest growth.
"The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades," said one Gartner analyst.
In defining what constitutes a PC, Gartner includes notebooks and "premium" ultramobile devices -- but does not include iPads or Chromebooks.
Globally, both Gartner and IDC reported a flat PC market (up 0.1 percent in Gartner's view, down 0.9 percent in IDC's), after the previous quarter's modest growth.
"The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades," said one Gartner analyst.
In defining what constitutes a PC, Gartner includes notebooks and "premium" ultramobile devices -- but does not include iPads or Chromebooks.
Only those that can run a good amount of local apps. Many Chromebooks are just glorified WebTVs. No room to save locally, no control over local apps == no privacy, Scroogle controls everything. Ta hell with that model.
What? Both ChromeOS and Android are widely available on non-Google hardware.
The dup article touts Microsoft's US PC sales once again, overlooking the fact that Microsoft's miserable 600k worldwide PC sales are less than one sixth of Acer's worldwide PC sales. WTF.
With 1% annual growth rate the technical term for Microsoft's PC effort is "vanity project". Looks like the spin department is desperately feeding the media to try to keep it on life support.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.