Apple Notebook Shipments Skyrocket 61%

This is a good news, bad news story. Let's start with the good news!

DisplaySearch, a market research firm, is reporting that Apple's sales of notebook computers are up 61% from 1st Quarter, 2007 to 1st Quarter, 2008. In that fiscal quarter, Apple shipped over 1.4 million notebooks, compared to almost 900,000 the year before. That puts Apple just behind Asus in terms of growth year-to-year, as the Taiwanese board and component maker saw a 67% growth rate. Most other notebook manufacturers saw growth rates in the 20 - 40% range.

The bad news? Apple's still in seventh place in overall notebook market share at 4.6%, trailing behind leaders HP (20.8%), Dell (15.1%), and Acer (14.7%) but still ahead of Asus (4.3%) and Sony (4.2%).

My personal speculation is that Asus is seeing huge increases due to the Eee PC subnotebook, which has been extremely popular with geeks wanting tiny Linux or Windows computers. If trends continue, Apple's notebook market share numbers should continue to grow into 2008.

[via DisplaySearch]

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Source: http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/displaysearch/hs.x…

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This is a good news, bad news story. Let's start with the good news! DisplaySearch, a market research firm, is reporting that Apple's sales...

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Derek Payne

As a recent switcher (one week!) the reason is .....Vista sucks.
I bought a beautiful HP laptop last summer with Vista and after 12 months of use I just got so frustrated with the lenghtof time everything took. 2minutes plus to bootup, 55seconds to shut down and so un-intuitive. Having loved the Mac concept since I first read a magazine review of the Lisa in 1983, now I can afford one! Macbook is fab fab fab. That's why market share is rising. you switch it on and it just works.

July 06 2008 at 5:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mckoder

Apple should reduce prices. Windows has never been weaker. Windows will never be weaker. This is a golden opportunity for Apple to gain significant market share. Sadly Apple's prices are 50% higher than similarly equipped Sony, so while Apple is doing well, they are not doing as well as they could.

July 06 2008 at 12:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to mckoder's comment

Derek Payne

Not in UK they're not - maybe 10% higher.

July 06 2008 at 5:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nikster

Frankly, I am not surprised. Apple will keep up those growth rates for years to come - first they broke out of their graphics designers niche, then they broke out of their hipsters and cool people and geeks niche and soon everyone will be buying them.

I live in SE Asia where Apple was basically unknown a few years ago - no one had every heard of it. Now, I see major chain stores setting up special Apple sections, iPods and (hacked) iPhones are everywhere. I recently saw some school girls ogling MacBooks in a store that had just started selling them. And you know what happens when something becomes popular with Asian school girls - it's one step from ubiquity.

Apple has a market share of 0% in large parts of the world, just lifting that to U.S. levels will double or triple the number of machines they're selling. iPod and iPhone have everything to do with that.

June 30 2008 at 4:43 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jeff

Market share is meaningless statistic. The market capitalization of DELL and HPQ combined is less than that of AAPL.

June 30 2008 at 2:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to jeff's comment

jojosalami

@ jeff;

No it is not. I know it is a fairly over used anagram but imagine someone who has been familiar with desktops but is ready to go ahead and buy a laptop. What's the first thing they would do? ... Ask their friends their opinions on which laptops THEY have. Now imagine if the person has 100 friends. TWENTY-ONE of those friends would suggest to him the HP while only 5 would suggest to him the apple. Which do you think he will go for? I rest my case.

I will end by saying that a few years ago, when HP wasn't the behemoth it is right now, and everyone was hating on it, I bought one. They had the best bang per buck. Now a few weeks ago, I bought an ASUS (not an Eee) but an m70. Again, the best bang per buck on the market. I will only say that I have high expectations for ASUS and AAPL. They will become the future computer market behemoths.

July 06 2008 at 1:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Constable Odo

The good news is that Apple is going great guns on all fronts with no end in sight. The bad news is that Apple's stock price will continue to fall with all the other tech stocks.

June 29 2008 at 11:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Robert

It would be interesting to see the raw market share numbers of higher end laptops, since Apple has no products down at the bottom end of the market, where all those other guys are.

June 29 2008 at 8:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rickumus

The price of Apple laptop upgrades has skyrocketed too!

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49297849,00.htm

June 29 2008 at 2:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

totoro

Market share isn't as important as profit margin/unit for Apple, based on their strategy on the computer side.

What do you think Asus is making per sale of EEEs?

June 29 2008 at 1:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ridgerunner

Steve,

Are those "bad news" Market Share numbers for sales in the quarter (kinda bad), or for overall installed base? (not bad at all!)

June 29 2008 at 1:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Ridgerunner's comment

Joseph Reiter

I'm not sure why it would be bad news for Apple to be in 7th place among other manufacturers. Apple is in a solid (and growing) niche and that is fantastic. They get to build products they and their customers love instead of the constant pressures of generalists like HP that have to keep expanding into new (to them, but not to the world) products that are boring to work on and have lackluster sales (how many laptop models and configurations do they have now).

Apple succeeds because they build products that excite their customers and have demand. They take chances on new, innovative products and sometimes hit the jackpot. Apple's market share affords them that luxury. I don't think it is a problem, it may actually be their biggest strength.

June 30 2008 at 8:14 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Luke H.

Hmm... I'm a very great fan of Apple, but honestly, have we been thinking? Do we want Apple to grow all that much? And to get more Mac users?

If everyone is special... no one is.

Besides, more users just means more viruses, more security problems. XD I mean, it's great news that Apple is growing! I just don't want us to grow too much.

June 29 2008 at 12:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Luke H.'s comment

brotherStefan

"Besides, more users just means more viruses, more security problems."

Utter nonsense. Hard-to-reach fruit is still hard to reach, no matter how full the tree is.

June 29 2008 at 5:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply