Love it or hate it, Mac sales are rising

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Daring to suggest that Apple Mac sales are on the rise seems to have touched a nerve. What can I say? Oh, this: 'Apple Mac sales are on the rise'.

Fortune (part of CNN Money) has just pointed out that Mac sales to enterprise - a long standing weak spot in Apple's sales - surged in June.

The Fortune article also puts the worldwide presence of Apple Macs in the PC market at 3.5 per cent, which I believe is too low - at least in some markets, it's as high as 10 per cent. That's what it is here in New Zealand, for example.

Using IDC's numbers for calendar Q2, Needham's Charlie Wolf took a close look at Mac shipments in various market segments, from the home to the largest enterprises. Among his findings:

At 35 per cent, Mac shipment growth in June easily exceeded the market's growth rate - which is solid at 20.9 per cent.

Mac shipments grew 31.4 per cent in the home market. This market segment's growth rate was 25.2 per cent.

At 49.8 per cent, the Mac's growth in business was three times higher than the market's (at 15.7 per cent).

Mac shipments to government agencies grew 200 per cent. That's sixteen times faster than the market's rate (which was 12.1 per cent).

Breaking down the business portion of that data, Wolf found that Apple's fastest growth was in the largest enterprises, which is another sea change for Apple.

As a commenter on that site wrote (James from Arlington, Virginia): "I know so many IT people that refuse to go to Apple because they know that they only have a job due to Microsoft's products being bad."

It looks like those days are on the way out.

About three years ago I noticed that in some New Zealand companies, managers and directors were insisting on having Macs despite their companies being PC sites.

Their IT guys didn't like this much, but hey, don't argue with the boss. And maybe they had a good reason - the envy it produced in the lower ranks. (Not that that was the reason IT guys were using - normally, it was 'they don't integrate, they're different.' Yeah, they're different. Yeah, they do integrate. Get over it.)

I was talking to a couple of Auckland-based FileMaker developers last week - they work on Macs but 70 per cent of their clients are on PC. They noticed two things - every PC site they deal with had either an IT person on site, or off site and on call; no Mac sites they dealt with had IT guys. At all.

But the Mac sites were more demanding customers. "They expect it to work intuitively, perfectly and first time. PC people don't."

(This full article is forthcoming.)

Finally, analyst Wolf singled out the "intriguing phenomenon" of the Mac's continued surge in the European home market. Here, Apple's unit share more than doubled (from 3.4 per cent to 7 per cent) and its dollar share more than tripled (from 4.6 per cent to 15.4 per cent).

Wolf thinks this is the 'iPhone halo effect'. "The key driver," of Mac sales in the European market, Wolf writes, "appears to be the iPhone. The iPhone holds a higher share in the European smartphone market than it does in the US because it is distributed through multiple carriers in most countries in this region. In addition, the halo effect emanating from the iPhone is undoubtedly stronger than the iPod halo effect."

Wolf has a point. Another article, published by Daniel Jalkut on Macworld, points out that every product Apple now sells, from the Airport Express to the iPad, works even better if you have a Mac. "Smart developers will adopt the same strategy: build unique solutions to suit the strengths of each product, and use the Mac as the digital hub that seamlessly pulls them together."

Jalkut, who is a developer, echoes the feelings expressed by MacTheMag's Matthew JC. Powell, who is keynoting on the Saturday at CreativeTech, September 10-11th.

As a long time Mac user, Powell expressed his discomfort that Apple now seems to be less about Macs and more about iDevices in an article published on Mac Planet.


As Jalkut puts it "... as a long-time Mac developer, I have to admit that I'm disappointed that they've overshadowed my beloved desktop computer. For several years there, the Mac faithful were treated to a revival in Mac marketing. But lately, "Hello, I'm a Mac" has been replaced by "There's an app for that."

I agree with their sentiments - I've been using Macs extensively from 1989.

Well, I did agree with those sentiments - and I still feel a little disquiet - but Apple's shipping of those amazing new iMacs a few weeks ago has really allayed many of my misgivings.

Apple is definitely still fully engaged with producing great computers.

Thank goodness.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com