Mac sales tripled since 2005
Jobsian wave sweeps Asia
Amid all the ballyhoo and whoop-de-doo about Apple's resurgence being a result of the consecutive successes of the iPod and iPhone — and the promise of the iPad — one Cupertinian money-maker has been flying under the radar: Mac sales have tripled in the past five years.
During the company's recently completed $15.7bn third fiscal quarter, Apple sold 1 million desktops (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro and Xserve), accounting for revenues of $1.3bn, and 2.47 million notebooks (MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro), bringing in $3.1bn.
While the iPhone et al have been capturing headlines, the Mac has been capturing hearts and minds
Overall, that's a 33 per cent unit-sales uptick when compared with the same period last year — a quarter that, while admittedly not a barn-burner, was still respectable.
A glance at the just-finished quarter's SEC Form 8-K shows that the total Mac revenue of $4.4bn, though lagging behind the iPhone's $5.3bn, was still head and shoulders above the iPad's $2.2bn, iPod's $1.5bn, and iTunes' $1.2bn.
Compare that with, say, the third quarter of 2005, when Macs pulled in under $1.6bn, the iPod contributed $1.1bn, iTunes a meager $241m — and the iPhone and iPad were merely a gleam in Steve Jobs' eye.
Whether you're a fanboi or a hater, the numbers don't lie (click for larger version)
In a conference call with analysts and reporters detailing the company's Q3 2010 results, Apple COO Tim Cook provided one insight into why Mac sales have tripled since Q3 2005: sales outside of the US, and especially in Asia, are skyrocketing on a percentage basis.
Speaking about what he referred to as "extraordinary" sales-development prospects in Asia, Cook said: "If you look at the Mac as an example, in Asia-Pacific the Macs grew 73 per cent year-over-year. This is phenomenal, that we could grow by this much. And in China we grew 144 per cent. In Korea we grew 184 per cent. In Hong Kong we almost doubled."
Of course, if you sell four Macs in Seoul one year and nine the next, your Korean sales have "almost doubled" — but the overall numbers don't support that depth of mathematical trickery: in Q3 2009, 394 thousand Macs were sold in Asia-Pacific; 260 thousand were sold in the same period the previous year. That's over 50 per cent growth, and none too shabby.
And perhaps more interestingly, the ASPs (average selling prices) of those Macs increased far more than their mere numbers: Apple pulled in more than $1.8bn in Mac sales from Asia-Pacific in Q3 2010, but only $703m in Q3 2009.
By the way, Apple doesn't lump Japan into its Asia-Pacific numbers — they're their own Mac line item. In the most-recent quarter, Mac sales in Japan were $910m; in the same period last year they were just $560m. That a 63 per cent jump year-on-year.
And so the trusty ol' Mac goes its merry way, quietly capturing scads of cash for Cupertino while letting the flashier gadgets grab the headlines. ®
COMMENTS
I moved to the light too
I switched over about 4 years ago. I like OS X's simplicity and reliability, I'm not battling with the operating system, as I was with Win XP and Vista, just being more productive. The analogy I'd use is cars, when you are young with heaps of time on your hands, you can enjoy restoring a banger, repairing old cars that you could never afford to buy brand new. But as you get older, you'd rather not spend your time on the machine, but just want to get from A to B quickly, safely and in comfort. Same for computing
I got sick of windows hanging up, and crashing, trashing hours of work. Programs that just stopped working. The constant threat of virus and malware, and the reality of it at work, when idiots merrily open all email attachments regardless of origin. Funny thing is that I still use Win XP for my CAD system run under Parallels, and guess what? Win XP is much more stable on Mac hardware.
I was visiting a customer last week and during the meeting there where two occasions when their windows laptops crashed or hung up. I was so glad that I no longer use Microsoft products, but what truly amazed me is their acceptance that their 21st Century computers crashed and hung up, they even congratulated themselves on managing to restart and "solve" the problem.
We all make choices in life, guess a lot more people are choosing a Mac. (Resale values are higher too)
Re: So I think it'll be something else, but I'm not sure what.
It may just be that more people are cottoning onto the fact that Macs are just less hassle to run and use than Windows. I switched for several reasons, but a major one was that I was just so fed up of spending so much time maintaining Windows and the necessary security software instead of using the computer for what I wanted to do.
What a refreshing change...
... to read the comments on an article about Apple and not see a mass of rabid hatred from people who have probably never have used their products.
I must be on the wrong website. Or maybe I stepped into an alternate reality when I woke up this morning.
'doze on a mac
When I crossed from the darkness (windows) into the light (OS X) I was adamant I'd need windows and kept both a bootcamp partition and a Parallels windows VM
Initially I used the VM quite often - my old bank, for example, had internet banking that only worked on IE6 - but I can't even tell you the last time I used either - boot camp or the VM
it was like a safety blanket that I've grown out of. But I probably wouldn't have taken the risk of OS X without it
--
actually, reading this I feel perhaps I should have started:
Hello, my name is Paul and I'm an Apple user...
Not Quite
With lessening Windows sales, I'd say not.
It's a nice method of transition for the unsure, but it's just a stepping stone.
Mac OS X has all the power of a UNIX / Linux system with better user-friendliness than Windows, so it's a win-win OS. Ignoring all the flaming about "proprietary" / "locked-down" devices, the actual Mac OS X is still an open source core with a value-for-money proprietary user interface.
Don't get me wrong, Windows 7 has made huge strides forward, and we've had XP virtual machines (as well as Linux / UNIX variants) for many years (for testing our products), but moving to Macs was the best move my company has made. Simplicity and power.
Oh, and yes, nothing is perfect, but the flaws I occasionally find with Apple devices are far fewer than the flaws I find on any other device.
(And in case someone puts any comments about antennas here, we've got a stack of iPads and iPhone 4s in our department that we use in "the wild" daily and extensively, and we've yet to hit an issue with any of them - I've seen issues - just not with our particular purchases).
