Apple US retail sales leap past PC par
MacBook Air driving demand?
Apple took 14 per cent of the US retail computer market last month - 25 per cent if you look at its share in terms of sales revenue - figures from market watcher NPD reveal.
This time last year, NPD's numbers show Apple's unit and revenue retail shares were nine per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. Apple shifted 55 per cent more desktops between February 2007 and February 2008, netting itself 68 per cent higher revenues. For notebooks, the growth rates were 64 per cent for units, 67 per cent for revenue.
Apple's MacBook Air: slim shape, big sales?
The US retail PC market as a whole grew nine per cent in the same period - five per cent in terms of sales revenue - though laptop unit sales were up 20 per cent, according to NPD's stats. Desktop shipments were down five per cent. Sales revenues for the two types rose by 11 per cent and declined two per cent, respectively.
So whatever you think of Apple's kit, mainstream buyers are clearly increasingly keen to try it out.
According to another analyst, Pacific Crest Securities' Andy Hargreaves, cited by AppleInsider, the MacBook Air was particularly popular in February, the month it went on sale. The Air attracted a raft of new buyers to the Apple platform, he said, not simply folk replacing an Apple laptop they already owned.
And not just consumers, either. While the Air might seem to appeal most directly to the kind of folk you see using laptops in Starbucks, Hargreaves claimed "a new set of corporate customers make up a meaningful portion of MacBook Air buyers".
COMMENTS
Hmmm
Hmmm there be lies , damned lies and statistics !
Meanwhile back in the real world of sales of real computers , those branded with the official Apple logo barely sell one in twenty five new machines with it's lifted not so original BSD Unix/Linux at the core of it's OS !
Choices , it would appear all those evil p2p dudes and terrorists the very same ones that RIAA/MPAA want to kill very dead , are in reality spreading both the Apple OS far and wide for free with both "Bootcamp" and "Parallels" allowing all the knowledgeable Intel clone machine customers to play around with it , very much like a cat playing with a mouse so as to speak !
This 21st century false propaganda truly flies very high indeed !
PH knows a lot about false propaganda one suspects !
re: Toyota vs Lexus
Darryl - my point is more that to a significant section of the market, the cash money price differential is not so big that it will stop them buying the machine they want, rather than the Dell compromise.
People who have to lug around their computer up and down the country to meetings, given the choice, are likely to plump for the machine that is not going to turn them in to Quasimodo. Hence the popularity of the small form factor Vaios and their ilk. In particular, all the female execs I have worked with have always lusted after the Vaios and the small Toshibas because of the small weight. But with these machines the tradeoff is in screen size - escape the tyranny of backache only to end up with eye strain squinting at a tiny screen.
With MBA, you get the light weight, and a full size screen and keyboard. The tradeoff is that some of the connectivity options are not there - which as I've already pointed out, a chunk of people do not in practice use.
Will cost-conscious corporate IT departments flock to the MBA as a buffer against employee claims of back pain caused by lugging 2 kilos of Dell around in a badly designed freebie laptop bag? No. But someone who is self employed now has a choice as to whether or not they pay the extra few hundreds of pounds in order to get a balanced compromise laptop. Where the Lenovo X300 has gone before, I'm sure other Wintel manufacturers will follow - which can only be good for all of us.
re: Parallels
I switched from PC to Mac after over 20 years of faithful following. I wish I could say the Mac doesn't have flaws and quirks. Yet, I've only spend about 1 hour a year fixing mac fonts, file permissions, and cranky printer drivers whereas Windoh's has destroyed entire weekends.
Parallels demotes Windows to an application loader, where it should be - quietly sitting in the background where it can do no harm. If Windows gives the Blue Screen Of Death, I can restore it with a few mouse clicks and 15 minutes of backup recovery. Sweet.
The AirBook is flawed in that features were removed to make it thin and lightweight.
Re: The reason is obvious
yes.
Vista is terrible.
Linux and OS X are based on a 32 year old OS and XP/Vista based on a nearly 20 year old OS.
The Gold plated Bloat problem. It's bad on Linux & OS X, but just not as broken yet.
However as Linux tries hard to be be more Windows like, it gets worse and as MAC OS tries to be cool it gets sillier. Did the last non-UNIX based Mac OS die with OS 9?
Apple does well due to cool Marketing and the bad performance of others. Not because of usability, price or reliability.
If people boycotted Chinese products over Dafur, Tibet & etc, not many US tech gadgets and no Apple ones would be bought.
@Dan Wilkinson
Big quote coming up here....
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The "more money than sense" argument just doesn't stack up. As with most other products in the world, people don't always want the cheapest product available. They want to feel that they are buying the best that they can afford, and to think that they are proud of their purchases.
If this attitude was widespread in other sectors, no-one would buy BMW or Mercedes etc, because, on the face of it, what are you getting on a 3 series that you aren't getting in a Focus? More MPG? Probably not. Faster? Maybe, but not so as you would particularly notice on your rush hour crawl into work. No, you are paying for 2 things, 1) the increased quality - comfier seats, better design and materials etc, and 2) you are buying into the "superior product one-upmanship" that is prevalent in todays world.
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Hate to tell you this, Dan....but for me, what you've just written is the very *definition* of more money than sense. his elitist attitude (not necessarily yours) keeps Starbucks et al in business, and to me it's simply shallow and pointless. It's a pity that attitude is so prevalent, but there you go.
I *do* drive a small car, and I buy stuff that's good value for money, rather than being the big name brand. Note that I never said "cheap," simply "good value for money." I will pay a stinking fortune for a computer or phone if, technically, it's brilliant. If someone asked me to pay the same amount of money for something that was simply fashionable so that I could wave it around at people in a vain attempt to get vain respect, I'd tell them to stick said device up their arse. I paid good money for my Athena, and I'd pay the same for an Eee, but would I pay 6 times that amount for a device that does the same or even less, simply because it's the one on the TV ads? Not on your life, mate.
And when I fill up my car for 15 nicker, tax and insure it for tiny amounts of money, and then hit 50mpg going in and out of the city, I take a quiet moment to chuckle at the Beamer driver sat behind me, because with the vast amounts of money he's spent on his car, I've done and bought far more interesting things.
