Apple’s fourth quarter results that were released yesterday confirm that even though Apple dropped “Computer” from their name, computers are still a huge part of who they are and how they profit. We’ll get into those Mac details in just a minute, but first lets talk about their record breaking earnings for the quarter. It was unquestionably a huge quarter for Apple with their overall revenue exceeding $6.22 billion with a profit of $904 million. To compare, last year for the same quarter their revenue was $4.84 billion with a profit of $542 million. They have the sales of computers to thank for a good chunk of that revenue.
The growth in sales of Macintosh computers has been phenomenal. This year, 2,164,000 Macs were shipped which is 34% growth from the year prior. The sales alone of the Macs made up 62% of Apple’s revenue – more than the iPhone and iPods combined. It also appears that laptops were more trendy than desktops, making up more than 62% of Macs sold. Looking at the trend of their market share, it’s obvious that sales of Mac computers are on the rise. The graph below shows just this and while all of the numbers may not be completely accurate (data source), it provides us with an overall picture of where the Mac computer is headed.
As Mac sales reach new highs, it leaves me wondering if they’ll hit a wall anytime soon like Windows has. The Windows Market Share really hasn’t fluctuated over the last year. If Apple wants to continue the upward trend with the sales of their computers, they’re going to have to tackle the businesses sector and do something to try and get businesses on board. If they are able to do this, I think we’d see an even sharper increase in their market share.
Obviously it’s been a great quarter and an outstanding year for Apple despite a few bumps in the road. As you can imagine, these strong numbers have helped Apple’s stock quite a bit. As of this morning when trading opened, their stock rose $11.54 to $185.90 which is about double of what it was at the start of this year.
I believe Mac market place is parallel to its OS and hardware compatibility and usuability for people. Its price seems to decrease a bit in Europe. In France last year, its price has been decreasing. Will Leopard have an impact to clearly bend up its market’s sales line? I don’t think so. Vista’s increasing fast. Furthermore, Mac users will always be the same who don’t want to appear drowned in the mass. Mac is often synonym of demarcation for them. Which doesn’t mean Macs are this far away from commonly used computers.
I would not switch for a Mac, while anyway needing Windows!
That’s the reason for, plus price of course.
I wonder… if Mac marketshare is increasing, and Windows remains steady for the time being, who is losing share? Linux?
I think market share is only counted whenever a computer with the OS or the OS itself is bought from a store. Since people download and install Linux a lot of the time, it can’t be counted accurately. Maybe not, but that’s just what I heard.
I’ve always said the same thing. Almost all of my friends who have a Mac still run Windows in some sense, and I just couldn’t do that. If I was able to completely leave Windows then I would consider a switch, but the appeal quickly fades when multiple operating systems are required for me to get work done.
According to the source of the data we used for the graph it is Linux that is losing out. Well, we assume it is Linux because they have an “Other” column that is consistently going down.
In some reports that is the case, but the data source we used for the graph above is looking at website stats for a variety of sites on the Internet. It compiles these stats together to get the operating system trend.