IDC has finalized the preliminary PC shipment numbers released last month, confirming that the Mac hit its highest ever share of the U.S. market at 13%. Apple regained the place in lost to Lenovo back in April, moving back into third place behind HP at 28% and Dell with 24%.
Apple reported year-on-year growth of more than 20% in its Q4 earnings report, with Mac sales of 5.52M. In a subsequent interview with the WSJ, Tim Cook asked:
Would you rather own the Mac business or any of the Windows OEMs?
We learned recently that Apple’s share of the worldwide tablet market fell markedly from 29.2% last year to 22.8% this year, thanks to both falling sales and an increase in the number of competitor tablets, especially at the low end. The news was not all bad, however, with U.S. data showing that the iPad continues to dominate web usage, accounting for almost 80% of North American tablet traffic on the web, leaving its three largest competitors all down in single digits.
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I think it’s impossible for Apple to have any chance at gaining tablet market share when there are rival companies flooding the market with low-priced tablets. I don’t know why this is considered such a big deal. The whole idea of selling a product is to make money from selling it. Even if Apple sells less units of their products, they’re still profiting. Many of those rival companies are just dumping products at break-even or even possibly below-cost simply to move them out of inventory. When consumers buy those low-end Android tablets are they even using them? I honestly don’t understand why market share is considered that important. A company’s financial success doesn’t necessarily hinge on market share. Apple will most likely never sell competitively-priced tablets that will gain market share from Android and that’s all there is to it. Why investors believe market share trumps profits, I’ll never know. Anyone who’s taken accounting should understand that much.