Apple grabs number-three US PC market slot
Steps past Acer
Fanboys, rejoice - Apple 'aters, gnash your teeth. The Mac maker is now once again the third largest computer maker in the US.
So claims market watcher Gartner, which has just posted its Q2 numbers. Dell and HP were the top two companies with market shares of 31.9 per cent and 25.3 per cent, respectively. Between them they accounted for more than half of personal computer sales in the US during the quarter.
Apple managed a more modest 8.5 per cent share, putting it just ahead of Acer, which took 8.1 per cent of the market. Toshiba rounds off the top five with a 5.5 per cent share.
Apple showed the best growth, its sales leaping 38.1 per cent year on year. Dell's share was up 11.9 per cent, Acer's down 20.8 per cent. The other key players expect small, single-figure increases.
Overall, the US PC market was up 4.2 per cent to 16.49m units. Apple shipped 1.40m of them.
Internationally, it remains less successful, failing to make even the top five - in order, HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba, with global Q2 shares of 18.1, 15.6, 9.4, 7.8 and 4.4 per cent, respectively.
Some 71.86m PCs shipped worldwide in Q2.
COMMENTS
The Apple premium
You can get USB TV cards that are Mac-compatible, but you'll have to spend more than what you'd pay for the equivalent hardware without Mac support. For example, those Elgato devices? Mostly rebranded Hauppauge hardware with Mac OSX software and a fairly hefty premium attached. Hauppauge themselves offer hardware with and without Mac support - the stuff with it has a pretty white casing and a higher price tag. I use the Windows version - Linux doesn't care either way.
In an ideal world ...
there would be a number of desktop operating systems and none of them would have more than 50% market share. Because of this, the operating systems would need to be designed to support accepted standards so that they are interoperable.
We can only hope that what we are seeing is a longer term move in the market that will get us somewhat closer to this ideal world.
Hopefully, SUN will get their act together and manage to make their OpenSolaris more popular, too. Hopefully, BSD and Linux on the desktop will also become more widespread. Hopefully, OSX will continue to become more popular. Hopefully, all those together will eat into Windows market share to a point that could be described as an acceptable balance.
The only worry about Apple's market share growing, would be that they simply swap places with Microsoft. I don't personally think that there is a serious chance of that happening, but if all those who demand that Apple make their OS a universal software only product like Windows, if Apple was to listen to those folks, then there would actually the danger of that, the danger that Apple will simply become the new Microsoft. Their quality would likely deteriorate and their development would be driven by whatever continues to dominate the market. But Microsoft would not necessarily become the new Apple then. And even if they did, we as users of desktop computers (Winows, OSX or otherwise) would not gain anything if that happened.
So, with regards to whether Apple should sell vanilla OSX for all PCs, not just their own brand, I am inclined to say "Be careful what you wish for because you might get your wish granted", I say "Let sleeping dogs lie!".
BIOS is what makes PCs inferior
Yes, Apple is now using the same kind of hardware components used by other PC vendors, however, Apple doesn't use BIOS, they use proper firmware. A large number of quality issues with PCs stem from that crappy firmware they call BIOS. Once other vendors will be using EFI (or some other proper firmware) that's when you can really start considering the hardware as being of similar or equal quality. For as long as they use BIOS, their hardware will remain inferior.
@ac
We could spend all night defining "IBM clone" without getting anywhere. For this particular argument I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, because I knew what he was trying to say and didn't feel like splitting hairs on that particular subject. As I said, "IBM clone" is a somewhat outdated term. He means, approximately, a modern personal computer based on the original IBM PC and compatible with the Windows operating system.
The point of my P.P.P.S. was a warning: If he wants to try to use that particular term to disqualify the current Apple product line without disqualifying a lot of other PC products, he'd better be ready to defend his definition.
* windoze numbskulls
Talk all you want monkeys - it will not stop the Apple tsunami.
I am so going to enjoy your sorry asses being spanked so bad by Apple for the next decade. I just can't wait to see your ignorant mouths slam shut one by one.
