Gartner posts

Gartner's latest forecast is projecting global PC shipments will total 366.1 million units in 2010, a 19.7 percent increase from 305.8 million units shipped in 2009, with global PC spending forecast to reach $245 billion in 2010, up 12.2 percent from 2009. These latest numbers don't only include traditional PC towers and laptops, however. Garnter believes that netbooks and tablets will comprise a significant portion of the 366 million PC expected to ship this year – and they believe the iPad will help change the entire PC ecosystem.

"User requirements are clearly segmenting, and the mini-notebook proved this point," said Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst at Gartner. "Vendors can no longer afford to just think in terms of traditional PC form factors or architectures. With the rise of Web-delivered applications, many users no longer need a traditional PC running a resident general-purpose operating system and fast x86 CPU to satisfy their computing needs. Apple's iPad is just one of many new devices coming to market that will change the entire PC ecosystem and overlap it with the mobile phone industry. This will create significantly more opportunities for PC vendors as well as significantly more threats."

Netbooks aside, Gartner believes that vendors could ship up to 10.5 million traditional tablets and next-generation tablet devices worldwide in 2010 – that's roughly 2.8% of the total PC market tally. How much of that tally could be iPads? "The most likely scenario for iPad sales this year is 4.2 million units," says Gartner analyst Angela McIntyre. Most Wall Street analysts expect Apple to ship slightly more – around 5 million iPads in 2010.

One thing is sure: the PC market is changing. Some people, like my mother, will only require a tablet for simple browsing and email. Gone are the days when PC technology was "one size fits all."

iPhone sales are up more than 4% from a year ago, while the leading smartphone seller, Nokia, is down 3% from a year ago. That's the word from Gartner Research today as they survey 3rd quarter sales.

According to Gartner research:

Apple's worldwide smartphone share reached 17 per cent as iPhone sales totalled 7 million units in the third quarter of 2009 following the continued rollout of the iPhone 3GS in new countries. Its ASP (average selling price) is holding steady and sales in the fourth quarter should be even stronger as Apple starts selling in China, through one additional carrier in the UK, and in an additional 16 countries.

Sales of Windows smartphones had another quarterly decline, with Windows Mobile 6.5 appearing too late to factor into the accounting.

For a company that was dismissed two years ago for not having any experience in building phones, Apple seems to doing more than just OK. By the same token, the competition from the new Droid from Verizon should keep Apple innovating.

The numbers are preliminary, but Gartner's analysis of the US personal computer market for the 1st quarter of 2008 shows some remarkable market expansion year-over-year for Apple. With a 6.6% share of the US market (behind Dell, HP and Acer), Apple shipped over a million Macs in the quarter and had 32% growth in unit sales, far outpacing the 3% growth of the overall market and blowing past sales leader Dell's otherwise stellar 15% growth.

Gartner's report notes that "Apple enjoyed strong retail sales, and there were indications that Apple showed decent growth in the professional market as well." Someone's got to be buying all those machines!

[via MacRumors]

CIOs and IT pros pay money -- a lot of money -- for the opinions of the Gartner Group. Since I'm not shelling out $95 to buy "Gartner Changes It's iPhone Enterprise Recommendations," even though I'm sure it would be worth a giggle or two, I'll just point you to some folks who have read the new report. Short summary: author Ken Dulaney acknowledges that the circumstances leading to Gartner's original "burn it, it's a witch!" stance on the iPhone for enterprise use have changed, and with the additional support for Exchange and ActiveSync coming in June there are far fewer reasons to take a strict stand against iPhones in corporate settings.

Since Dulaney was the principal author of Gartner's first report, we commend him for sticking with the issue and setting the record straight. Now, about all those C-suite folks who already have iPhones... well, as Gartner describes the support levels required to handle idiosyncratic devices, there's "concierge," "appliance" and "platform" levels of support, with "concierge" being the most hands-on and resource-intensive (the iPhone is moving from "concierge" to "appliance" status with the June 2.0 update). How much do you want to bet that CEOs, CFOs and CIOs who go off the reservation and buy themselves iPhones and MacBook Airs are already getting, and will continue to get, "concierge"-level support from their IT departments? Yeah, that's what I thought too.

There are two conflicting reports on US marketshare out from Gartner and IDC. While both agree that Apple has moved solidly into the #3 slot in US marketshare (behind Dell and HP), they disagree about the actual numbers. Gartner gives Apple 8.1% of the US market with an estimate of 1.3 million Macs shipped, while IDC has our favorite fruit company at 6.3% with 1.1 million Macs shipped. Whatever the exact numbers it's clear that Apple is on the move and Dell is falling. With the Leopard launch right around the corner you've got to think that the bean counters in Cupertino are anticipating fourth quarter sales with glee.

[via electronista]

There's a movement afoot, and it arrives in nice white boxes. Gartner Research is reporting that preliminary data on Apple's 2007 first quarter shows a 30% year-over-year increase in computer shipments. Interestingly, the last quarter of 2006 showed the same increase. With the most recent data, Apple's estimated US market share rises a full point to 5%.

This growth in sales (against industry-wide unit growth of 2.6%) is the best indication of the escape-velocity pace of the Mac market's expansion. Woo hoo!

[via Fake Steve/Mac 2.0/MacDailyNews]

Yesterday's prelim 4th quarter report was great news for Apple's health as a manufacturer of personal computers - they shipped over 1.6 million Macs, the most ever in a quarter and 30% more than the previous quarter. Today's news of a rise to 6.1 percent market share in the U.S. from Gartner, however, has the Mac web doing the market share dance all over again, as just a year ago this month it was the NPD Group reporting that Apple's U.S. market share - excluding online sales - had risen to 6.6 percent. The confusion ensues when considering MacNN's conflicting report from Gartner claiming Apple's U.S. share just rose to 6.1 percent. Of course where and how these different groups are getting their numbers is unbeknownst to this blogger, but methinks something might have been lost in translation between all these analysts.

Still, while market share numbers might be getting a little fuzzy as of late, we can at least trust Apple's announcement of selling the most.Macs.evar in a quarter, and that's alright with me.

AppleInsider writes about a new Gartner report that states overall Mac market share has decreased in the first quarter of this year compared to the same quarter last year. However these findings conflict with an earlier news article by ZDNet based on earlier research by Gartner which suggested that worldwide Mac market share had actually increased slightly. MacRumors.com puts the numbers together:

U.S. Mac Market Share
1Q 2005: 3.8%
1Q 2006 (ZDNet): 3.5%
1Q 2006 (AI): 3.6%

Worldwide Mac Market Share
1Q 2005: 2.2%
1Q 2006 (ZDNet): 2.3%
1Q 2006 (AI): 2.0%

So depending on which report you believe, Apple could have gained or lost overall marketshare across the world. Both articles state that Apple has lost market share in the U.S. The only thing that's really clear is that Mac sales have obviously been lackluster in the first quarter when compared to the rest of the industry.

That's not entirely surprising considering that only Intel Mac that was available throughout the first quarter was the Intel iMac. The MacBook Pro didn't ship until mid-February, the Intel Mac mini wasn't released until late February and the MacBook was released just under three weeks ago. It's remarkable that the Mac market share has managed to stay as high as it is considering that half the Apple line-up hadn't made the transisition to Intel CPUs for much of the quarter. We've got to ask though, where did that 6.6% U.S. Mac marketshare that was reported last year go?