Both IDC and Gartner have released their preliminary figures on the state of the US and worldwide PC market, and while both companies agree that overall, the market declined about 3-5% worldwide, they differ when it comes to the figures of Apple. Quite interesting.
Starting with the figures for the worldwide market, we see that both research firms more or less agree with each other on who is doing (relatively) well and who is doing not so well. HP is leader of the pack, followed by Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba. The winners and losers are also quite clear: Dell is losing market share fast, while Acer is doing very, very well, probably mostly because of Acer’s very successful line of Aspire One netbooks. Remember, though, that profit margins on netbooks are generally lower.
The worldwide figures in detail, from both research firms:
If we narrow ourselves to the US market, we see a slightly different picture. Apple doesn’t play a role in the top 5 vendors worldwide, but in the US, its role is much bigger (which is the reason why during keynotes, Apple exclusively uses US figures). Interestingly enough, Gartner and IDC differ greatly when it comes to Apple: whereas the former sees a year-over-year 2.5% increase in sales for Apple, the latter sees a 12.4% decrease in Apple sales year-over-year. For the rest, it’s a pretty clear picture: Dell loses, Acer wins. Toshiba is also doing quite well.
The US figures in detail, again from both research firms:
The figures are not directly comparable, technically, since sales of x86 servers are not included in the figures by IDC. While theoretically this could explain the difference in Apple’s figures between the two research firms, it doesn’t seem too likely. We’ll have to wait until Apple publishes its own figures to see who is right on this one.
Overall though, the decline in sales is lower than what the two firms had predicted, so that could be seen as a good thing. The release of Windows 7 on October 22 could also help the market.
Why anyone, anywhere, would ever buy an Acer machine. Of all the systems I’ve ever had to work with, they have the shoddiest quality I’ve ever had the misfortune to repair. Granted, Dell isn’t too far behind when it comes to their laptops, but Acer is quite a bit worse overall. I suppose though it’s their prices. Just remember, you often do get exactly what you pay for.
Yup, I got an awesome netbook
I guess the other part of the world (other than Americas) is more concern on performance/money ratio, Apple for me is just too pricey for their hardware, I would rather spend the money on other brand and get much more better hardware.
I think it’s more that Apple does not adjust their prices according to the expectations of different parts of the world, rather they usually just convert their USD figure to whatever the local currency is and sell it at that price. In the U.S, Apple is really not that overpriced by comparison to others–yes, you do pay a little extra, but the difference is nowhere near what it is in other parts of the world. Add this to the fact that Apple really concentrates its marketing and other compaigns in the US as opposed to elseware and I think that explains why Apple is rising so much over here. Oh, plus, when you call Apple you usually get someone who speaks English, not some outsourced person from who knows where that you can barely understand and who pretends his name is “Fred” or “Steve.” A lot of us over here in the US are not very forgiving of that sort of thing, to be honest, when we say we want someone who speaks English we mean it. I, for one, would expect no less if I called somewhere and said I wanted someone who spoke any other language, being able to understand the customer and be understood by them is very important. Apple has put a lot of effort into its US customer base, though sadly they seem to ignore the rest of the world at the same time.
Here in the UK it is not uncommon for companies like Adobe, Apple & even Microsoft to use the
£1 == $1 exchange rate
even though the current rate is
£1 == $1.62 (or thereabouts)
Which is is why it is almost worth flying to NYC and buying Adobe Creative Suite there even with NY’s sales tax.
I think it’s more that Apple does not adjust their prices according to the expectations of different parts of the world, rather they usually just convert their USD figure to whatever the local currency is and sell it at that price.
This simply isn’t true. In Australia Apple charges at least 50% higher than US prices. Apple prices are at least twice those of equivalent PCs.
I wouldn’t agree; many times it is availability that dictates whether or not one purchases something. New Zealand not to long ago the only places you could purchase Apple Mac’s from were Mac based stores, the largest reseller being Magnummac. Flash forward to 2009 and now you can purchase them from big name retailers like Dick Smith, Harvey Norman, Noel Leeming, Bond & Bond.
For some products there are massive lead times – why is Amazon only selling their Music in the US? why are they only selling their Kindle in the US? why are they only selling their eBooks in the US? For those of us outside the US, if we can’t access it or accessing a product is prohibitively complex and convoluted, we aren’t going to bother.
As for their hardware being too pricey – on what metric? you *REALLY* think that the dollars you save are going to make up for just how cruddy Windows is? great, so you save $300 but inherit the pain of running a third rate operating system as a result (LInux isn’t even relevant on the desktop due to the lack of third party commercial software for the desktop and shonky hardware support (ath5k driver corrupting downloads anyone?)) really worth the money saved? I spent 1month with Windows Vista and I quickly sold the Lenovo laptop (after owning it for 1 month), took the hit in value drop and purchased a MacBook (before owning a Lenovo, I owned a MacBook); that is how horrible Windows is. There isn’t a single redeeming feature of it – but if you’re expectations are low and the only exposure to computers are computers running Windows then you’ll be thrilled by almost any damn thing thrown on the market (hence the reason you have so many Windows -> Linux converts and very few Mac -> Linux converts).
Edited 2009-07-18 01:12 UTC
For me, I run Linux exclusively, and I am happy with it. I only purchase hardware that is compatible with Linux. I could afford Apple, but for the same price, I could get much better hardware (faster CPU, more RAM, more disk, etc. ….)
It will be interesting to see if netbooks are a fad or are here to stay.
I’ve always thought, “Oh they are so cute. I just want one.”, but my household’s 3 Macbooks are doing up just fine.
Are you netbook owners still happy with your purchases?
Actually I am still quite happy with my Eee pc 1000HE, purchased it a few months back. It has several things that, for me, are important: twice the battery life of my Macbook, small size but extremely good keyboard, and is plenty fast enough to handle most of what I throw at it (granted though I did upgrade the ram to 2gb). Also, very important for me but probably not for the majority of consumers, runs Linux perfectly with 100% compatible hardware. So basically I have a little machine that can do just about anything I might need to and running my favored os to boot… yep, I’d say I’m satisfied.
I think, in the end, it comes down to what you need. If you need a portable desktop replacement, netbooks are not the right product. If, on the other hand, you need a secondary computer that can go anywhere and last for a long time on battery, a netbook might be worth considering.
Edited 2009-07-17 19:12 UTC
I also have an Asus 1000HE. I run EeeBuntu on it, and it does everything I need. I take it to school for note-taking – never have to worry about the battery. My wife, who is a non-techie, uses it all the time for her regular facebook addiction. I even got my 3G cell phone to work as a modem, so I have cheap internet access from anywhere (the cell keeps charged from the USB port). The only regret I have is that I bought a netbook without Linux pre-installed – not that Linux doesn’t run great on this one (suspend, etc). It’s just that I wish I had supported one of the Linux vendors like Dell, Zareason, Linux Certified or System76, to name a few. Instead, I contributed to the Asus snub of Linux. I will not do that again.
That I’ve seen, the demand for netbooks doesn’t seem to show any signs of dying out. Although I *do* suspect it will reach a saturation point before too long, due to the number of “meee toooo” netbooks that are little more than EeePC clones.
I can’t speak for netbook owners, although it was a close call during my last laptop upgrade (went with a Thinkpad x60 instead, which is – apparently – just on the verge of *not* being a netbook). But I’ve done a fair amount of support work on them and the owners all rave about them.
For that matter, my former roommate’s girlfriend describes their EeePC as the first computer she’s enjoyed using(and that’s from someone who previously had an “OMG computers are evil” mentality, believed that the Matrix & Terminator films were accurate predictions the future of computers, etc).
Other than the slight dissatisfaction with the Intel Atom N270, I love my AOA150 (8.9″ Acer Aspire One).
It quad-boots XP Home (came with it), eeeBuntu, Haiku GCC2 and Haiku GCC4 and they all run reasonably well on it.
I use it for travel and light-duty use throughout the house pretty regularly.
I think I would have preferred that the Atom was a little faster – at least enough to view hulu.com’s flash video in 480p mode
The people I know who are purchasing Netbooks tend to be people who have as their primary computer a desktop and simply want a low cost, light weight laptop. The problem is if you buy a traditional light weight laptop it will be almost NZ$3K for it. Netbooks give people what they want at a low price.
I know I’ve seen many students around university have it to take their notes but their main computer is a desktop one; if you’ve already got a laptop, though, its a hard pressed thing to justify purchasing a MacBook and even more difficult if you’re in my position where I already have a desktop and a laptop.