Apple hits 18% share of US computer market by end of year

Clearly SOMEONE (David?) thinks this one is done. And has clicked the "early close" link.

It would surprise me somewhat. Poking around on Apple's site, NPD's, Gartner's, and IDC's doesn't seem to pop up a recent announcement. The figures from mid-July had Apple at 8.5% (Gartner) or 7.8% (IDC). I can't believe that they've doubled in a month. Then again, it's hard to reconcile those figures with the 14% from NPD in February.

Obviously this is a field where metrics are hard to compare. TIS: step cautiously with this one before judgment.

what, no link in the comments?

Certainly seems reasonable. I do have two concerns, however.

This is news from about a month ago. Surely the NPD report would be cited more widely by now.

Secondly, this snippet cites a YOY increase from 15.4% to 19.5%. The NPD report in the original prediction cited a YOY increase from 9% to 14%. It's hard to believe that the same thing is being measured if Apple has experienced tremendous growth, yet slid from 15.4% last July to 14% in February, in such a way that the February number could still be considered outstanding. This suggests that NPD reports a number of different numbers measuring different things.

Incidently, I think I've figured out the discrepency between the Gartner/IDC numbers and the NPD numbers. Gartner/IDC were reporting total sales, NPD was reporting retail sales. The latter excludes all on-line or phone sales (so basically wipes Dell, among others, completely off the list, boosting Apple's relative ranking).

@Bradley, you said "It's hard to believe that the same thing is being measured if Apple has experienced tremendous growth, yet slid from 15.4% last July to 14% in February".

Well, it is not that hard to believe. Non-Apple desktops and laptops just had more sales in the US in 4Q07. This is consistent with Gartner's reports which showed a 2% drop (from 8.1% 3Q07 to 6.1% 4Q07) of market share (using different measure than NPD). See http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/17/apples-3rd-quarter-2007-u-s-marketsh... and http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=584210.

Apple just had explosive growth this year relative to the lackluster sales from non-Apple culminating in the 19.5% NPD numbers.

Hi Everyone,

First, I want to apologize for taking a little time to judge this one based on the thread that started on August 17. I haven't been ignoring this story. There is a lot of dubious data being passed around, but no real hard facts sitting in my hands. I didn’t want to make a snap decision based soley on conference call Q&A session between Macworld and an Apple executive before I had some time to think about it.

After combing through everything, here’s what we know today:

1. On April 1, 2008, Apple 2.0’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt cited from an IDC report that Apple’s worldwide market share grew from 2.4% in 2006 to 2.9% in 2007. The prediction here states that it is concerned with US market share, and that it must hit 18% for any month in 2008 for a favorable judgment. In the 2.0 article, an analyst forecasts that Apple would hit 21% consumer market share in the US.

“Munster is conservatively modeling global market share to remain flat this year, but he notes that enterprise sales account for 70% of the worldwide market, a segment Apple is not aggressively targeting.”

This prediction did not explicitly state any differentiation between the consumer and enterprise markets. If enterprise were to be included in the calculations, Apple would certainly fall far short in the US figures. I'm not blaming anyone - if I didn't have the report sitting in my lap, I wouldn't know exactly how to triangulate all of the requirements, either.

However, I believe that when this prediction was written (judgment call on my part) the intention was to forecast the US consumer market. So, keeping that in mind, let’s look at the rest of the data at hand.

2. Back in March, NPD reported impressive growth for Apple's market share, accounting for “a 14% unit share and 25 percent dollar share of all US-based PC retail sales, according to market research firm NPD.” Again, I believe this is focusing on the consumer market, so we’ll go with that.

3. Then, on July 21, in a Live Update, Macworld associate editor Dan Moren said, “In the U.S. channels tracked by NPD, Apple's share increased to 19.5% this year from 15.4% last year.” Again, there is no differentiation between consumer and enterprise here, so since the number is rather high, one must assume this implies the consumer market.

Now, personally, I find this to be rather dependable information, but I don’t have direct access to the NPD report. I can contact the editor at Macworld if anyone protests, but I am going to take Mr. Moren at his word (he’s a respected journalist, after all).

It is a tad troubling that Gartner and NPD Group are in completely different ballparks when it comes to this data, but since the prediction states, “Whatever method is being cited from NPD Group is what should be used when judging this prediction” that should of finish it. And, I personally believe that Gartner is including enterprise sales into their report, which would explain the large gulf between the two parties.

The other reason I’ve been struggling with this since David alerted us all to the news links is that we don’t really know which month Moren is referring to. Is the 19.5% referring to July? June? The whole year (impossible).

I am a tad baffled as to why this figure hasn’t been more loudly touted by Apple’s PR people, though. Seems a rather astonishing figure. I am now pressing the judgment button. I hope you all understand where I'm coming from, and from where the hesitation was born.

@Eric: Sounds reasonable to me.

Charles, while I concur that there was some room for different interpretation of this prediction, the one thing that remained the same is the NPD Group report. The specific breakout of computer market wasn't detailed in the NPD Group report (see Eric's diligent analysis). Note that Gartner's numbers are significant different than that of NPD Group. Suffice to say that given the criteria was explicit noted to use NPD Group's method for judgement, the decision was made after a due diligent process to dissect the interpretation of the NPD Group metric. We all struggle to make predictions as clear and with no room for misinterpretation (even today). That is why I have always advocated to get clarification (if you have any doubt) before voting or placing a bet.

Heh - thanks, Bradley. I fixed David's comment.