Apple Soars to Third Place in U.S. PC Market With 10.7% Share
Research firms Gartner and IDC today released their preliminary quarterly personal computer shipment data, offering up a picture of market performance during the second quarter of 2011. Overall, the PC industry exhibited small growth …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's climb to a 10.7% U.S. shipment share closes a loop that started years earlier: the company sat at 8.1% of the U.S. market back in Q3 2007, and Gartner projected in early 2008 that Apple would roughly double its U.S. and European share by 2011 — that forecast has now essentially landed on schedule.
The milestone also carries an asterisk familiar to anyone tracking these trackers: Gartner and IDC have clashed over Apple's quarterly numbers before, with their 2009 estimates diverging so far analysts could not agree whether Mac sales were up or down — so the third-place ranking itself may be contested when final figures arrive.
First-order effects
- Apple displaces one of the incumbent Windows vendors from the top-three U.S. ranks for the quarter, putting HP, Dell, or Acer in the position of explaining share loss in a market growing only slightly.
- A 10.7% share on small overall industry growth means Apple captured a disproportionate slice of whatever new demand existed, tightening pricing and positioning pressure on mid-tier PC makers.
Second-order effects
- Rival PC vendors face mounting pressure to compete in the premium consumer segment where Apple concentrates, rather than ceding it entirely and fighting only on price in commodity machines.
- With Gartner simultaneously reporting explosive mobile-device growth through 2010 — smartphone sales up 96% in Q3 2010 alone — PC vendors must now defend against share loss to tablets and phones, not just to each other, making Apple's dual role as top PC-gainer and iPad seller uniquely uncomfortable for competitors.
Third-order effects
- If design-led premium machines keep outgrowing the commodity core, the U.S. PC industry structurally splits between high-margin fashionized computing brands and thin-margin volume assemblers — the dynamic captured in the broader worldwide Mac share trajectory analysts are watching this year.
- Sustained analyst disagreement over Apple's numbers, as in 2009, points toward measurement itself becoming a battleground, with vendors' investor narratives increasingly hinging on which research firm's methodology wins acceptance.
The trend: Consumer computing is consolidating around premium design-led vendors like Apple while overall PC growth flattens under pressure from smartphones and tablets.