A look at Apple’s market share of computer costing $1,000 or more
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Mar 22, 2007 at 6:15am
In a recent Roughly Drafted column, Daniel Eran questioned the somewhat skewed idea of computer market share. For example, he says that Dell and HP “dump out massive numbers of PCs and have an average selling price of around $740.” This got Macsimum News wondering just what percentage of market share Apple has for personal computers costing US$1,000 or more?
According to IDC’s “Worldwide PC Tracker,” Apple captured 5.8 percent of the total worldwide market for personal computers costing more than $1000 in 2006, Mike Shirer of the IDC research group told us. Apple’s share of the worldwide computer market in 2006 (regardless of price) was 2.5 percent. (The Garnter research group reported in January 2007 that the worldwide computer market in the fourth quarter of 2006 grew by 7.4 percent over the previous year to 67.3 million units. Apple sold 1.6 million Macs in that quarter, giving it a “mere” 2.3 percent of that global market.)
So Eran is right in saying that the conclusions of market share statistics can be grossly inaccurate. If you remove the Mac mini (Apple’s only sub-$1,000 Mac aside from the almost-$1,000 17-inch iMac) from the equation, the Mac’s worldwide market share for computers costing over $1,000 (obviously, Apple’s main target audience) is 5.8 percent compared to 2.3/2.5 percent of the overall market. That’s a big difference, and pretty much underscores the notion that statistics can be used to “prove” a variety of things.
Also, for comparison’s sake, Apple’s share of the worldwide consumer and enterprise markets (regardless of price) was 1.3 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively, per IDC.
As I see it Says:
“Daniel Eran questioned the somewhat skewed idea of computer market share.”
We don’t need to pretend that the idea of computer market share is skewed. This line of defense is of little use, this is an easy way out. The Mac market share is increasing, this is not to say that the Mac will take over the market, but any way you cut it, Apple’s share is growing. As measured by NPD, Gartner, IDC, in retail, in the U.S., even worldwide. Despite higher price points, whatever, the Mac is doing quite fine thank you.
“Apple captured 5.8 percent of the total worldwide market for personal computers costing more than $1000 in 2006, Mike Shirer of the IDC research group told us.”
Not much of a surprise, considering that the Mac average selling price is much higher. At the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference last month, Peter Oppenheimer said: “We are very competitive in the price bands that we are choosing to compete in.” (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2551) Apple is mostly targeting the price bands that generate a large amount of revenue.
“So Eran is right in saying that the conclusions of market share statistics can be grossly inaccurate. […] the Mac’s worldwide market share for computers costing over $1,000 is 5.8 percent compared to 2.3/2.5 percent of the overall market.”
If you apply the same logic to the Zune, it is justified to say that the Zune market share in the segment and the price band targeted by MS is approximately 10 percent compared to 2 percent overall. Ironically, when MS presented the 10 percent market share figure amongst HD players, it was criticized at roughlydrafted.com.
Posted on April 05, 2007
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
DAG Says:
All the market share stuff that has been flying around the net and elsewhere for at least a decade misses the essential point that Apple certainly knows well by now- it’s not the share of a market that matters as much as having a large enough base to be profitable for developers.
The numbers I’ve seen show 22+ million people using OS X in some flavor and 25 million+ using some version of Mac OS (presumably OS 9). Although it pales compared to 300 million+ Windows PCs, it is still a substantial market, and certainly one many developers are able to make money in.
Within this context, the only time market share would factor in is if a company has limited resources for development. Assuming it takes about the same amount of money, time and effort to develop a Windows app as a Mac app, it makes more sense to target the larger market. For example- 10% of the Windows market for an app is larger than 100% of the Mac market. If you only have the resources to develop for one, it’s going to take a really compelling reason to target the smaller market.
As developer tools and practices become more common across platforms, the difficulty in supporting multiple platforms should become less costly in time and money. That should be good news for Mac users in the long run. Unified, cross platform developer tools are already available, QT from TrollTech, for example.
Take a look at their site and see the possibilities:
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/features
Posted on March 22, 2007