Steve Jobs says analysts should stop worrying about market share and focus on profits. And moving the company beyond Macs could boost both. Yet Apple’s market share has slipped inexorably. It dropped from 9.4% in 1993 to just 3% in 1997, the year Jobs was rehired to run the company. According to Gartner’s preliminary market-share data, Apple held just 1.8% of the worldwide PC market in the fourth quarter of 2003. And some think Apple’s share will fall further, if it can’t keep pace with surging overall PC demand. In the meantime, the Street yawned when Jobs & Co. recently reported strong results, citing slack sales of the new G5 and ignoring plenty of good news.
A Better Measure of Apple’s Success?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Jobs is completely correct. it doesn’t matter what Apple’s market share is as long as they’re profitable. As long as they’re profitable, they’ll keep putting out computers and OS’s I want. And I have no desire for switching to an Intel or even an AMD architecture. To date my biggest complaint has been Motorola’s foot dragging on the processor front. Now that’s no longer an issue. IBM’s G5 design is superior and is projected to ramp up to crazy performance in the next few years. The 90nm coming out hits miniscule levels of power consumption as compared to anything in the neighborhood. Plus, the design crushes.
Finally, what will it take to kill the ignorant ‘Macs are so expensive!’ comments? Compare a fully loaded G5 to a comparable 64-bit PC. Compare their servers to any of comparable performance. For an even grand, the iBook absolutely rocks for all my needs except gaming. Throw in the superior software that comes with it (OS X, iLife, Mail, etc., etc.) and the cost is ridiculously low. It works. It never crashes. It allows me through Fink and Darwinports to access a boatload of Linux/Unix software. Don’t even get me started on the quality of OS X in terms of flexible, secure, solid useability over most competitors.
After 13 years of hacking around on every form of Windows under the sun for home and work, and dipping my toes into the Linux waters at least once a year to check out progress, I’m a year and a half back into the Mac experience, and it’s beautiful. Perfect? Of course not. Better than anything else out their for my needs (and the needs of many friends and all my family)? Absolutely.
A twit? Curse you Mac-Fanboy.No…I will not validate your exsitence by arguing with you. Buwhaaaa im a genious.
Apple has never submitted any REAL SPEC results:
http://www.specbench.org/cpu2000/results/cpu2000.html
There is not one data point from Apple. Not one. Now that’s confidence in your “beyond the supercomputer” processor, eh?
Except for the ones they provided on the G5 webpage http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
All we have is the rubbish that they made up when the G5 was first introduced. After it was proven that the tests were bogus, Apple withdrew them and now uses another completely bogus set of benchmarks that are also full of lies.
a 2ghz risc machine with two independent 1ghz memory buses and the capability of addressing 8gb of memory is a complete lie eh? well color me foolish. i don’t care what you say, a machine with that much power is going to OWN a xeon or pentium4 at any application that uses more than 4gb of ram, and it’s going to hold it’s own very well compared to an opteron.
There’s some sort of BS also going on with Apple’s claimed heat dissipation on the G5. If the numbers they quoted were true, they wouldn’t need all the special cooling stuff they did for the G5. The heatsinks are giant, bigger than anything in Xeon/Opteron land, there is a special plastic duct, special fans, etc. Obviously something is amiss for Apple to need that much hardware to cool what is supposed to be a very cool running processor…
sorry, that’s not BS. the machine has a large heatsink and a lot of fans to reduce noise. you know what happens when you increase the surface area of a heatsink? you get greater heat dissipation. you know what happens when you have lots of fans that all run at low RPMs? you have the same fan power as a machine with a few high rpm noisy fans. it’s a beautiful design that makes the g5 not only cool, but quiet.
To add to this point… note that those hot P4’s (desktop chips) have even been put into laptops for a long time now. If the G5 is so darn cool and efficient, why is it not available in a laptop?
p4 laptops also have 1-2 hours of battery life, weigh 6-8 pounds, run hot as hell, usually 2-3 inches thick, and are ugly as hell. apple will put a g5 in a laptop when 1) it’s cool enough and consums less power (hence the 90nm g5 chips that just came out in the new xserves) and when they can keep the form factor of the new powerbooks thin enough to fit in the current g4 powerbook cases. apple doesn’t make cheap wintel crap. sure apple could have put a g5 processor in a 2 inch thick 7 inch laptop with 1 hour of battery life, but apple DOESN’T do that. they make quality machines, not poorly designed machines.
Over time, a person learns that he has to look at everything Apple claims about their OS and/or hardware as a lie until proven otherwise. Apple has made many lies about their G5. I would not be surprised to learn if the G5 power/heat figures are lies as well.
sorry, those specs are from IBM. i doubt IBM, one of the biggest tech companies, is lying about specs that apple doesn’t even have anything to do with. os x is so much more open than windows its sad. windows registry? os x doesn’t need one. admin privledges just to run basic applications or games? os x doesn’t need admin access for that stuff. built in web server without serious security flaws? os x comes with apache, not the security hole filled IIS. the list goes on and on. it’s not worth listing them all.
windows is garbage. if you complained more about the cost of emacs or imacs (which in comparison to pcs ARE over priced) i might think you have valid points, but you’re nothing but a wintel fan boy who thinks macs suck and yet has never used one for more than a few minutes at best buy and thinks he’s an expert.
Not exactly Mr. Current Afairs are ya? The VA Tech cluster is being replaced with Xserves which do in fact use ECC. Go do some reading.
The current scores refer to PowerMac machines, and so I refer to them, too.
I could give a crap about what the dual G5s do against Opterons in Spec benchmarks. Seriously, wtf is Spec really. Lets take a look at real world use here and see who is faster. Most of what I read shows the Dual G5 to be faster in most (not all)real world tests vs. Dual Opteron. The G5, however, usually trounces the Dual Opeteron and Xeon systems by incredible margins in Digital Video encoding as well as audio encoding. In some cases by as much as 40+% on DV. Considering that DV and audio is the market Apple pretty much owns, this is a good thing.
Using Apple-selected software for both Mac and PC, or using a truly crossplatform app that is well-optimized for both platforms? Video and audio encoders can produce the same format and yet be completely different in quality and perfomance. IMO, a 40% difference means either non-optimized bastard child PC version or benchmarking error. Or an intentional misleading decision, like Apple PowerMac G5 playing more simultaneous video streams then an HP workstation because G5 was connected to a friggin’ Xserve RAID.
SPEC is NOT close to reality….when in reality are the only inputs always in the right order to be processed, always predictable (which highly inflates Intels speed by the way since their long pipe makes a failed prediction VERY costly), and no latency from periferals?
SPEC inflates Intel scores because their compiler is just better in perfomance optimizations. And since this is a processor benchmark, it should show the speed of processor, rather then speed of your external hard drive or camera.
you are aware that the origional P/P thread was talking about the G5 against the Opteron…right?
“you are aware that the origional P/P thread was talking about the G5 against the Opteron…right?”
<humming> Is someone talking to me? I dont hear anyone, must just be my imagination.
SPEC is NOT close to reality….when in reality are the only inputs always in the right order to be processed, always predictable (which highly inflates Intels speed by the way since their long pipe makes a failed prediction VERY costly), and no latency from periferals?
SPEC inflates Intel scores because their compiler is just better in perfomance optimizations. And since this is a processor benchmark, it should show the speed of processor, rather then speed of your external hard drive or camera.
SPEC inflates intel’s scores because the Branch predictions are a non issue. your ignorence over this prooves you to be lacking in the appropriate level of education in this area to be disscussing the facts.
The VA Tech cluster is now on Xserves as it should have been. The results should be the same. As for Powermac which is a desktop, compare it to most PC which also in fact use non-Ecc RAM. So where is your point?
SPEC inflates intel’s scores because the Branch predictions are a non issue. your ignorence over this prooves you to be lacking in the appropriate level of education in this area to be disscussing the facts.
So you want to tell me that processor’s branch prediction is a non-issue in SPEC? Wrong, very wrong. You should not be talking about education. Check this article out: http://www.digit-life.com/articles/insidespeccpu2000/ . What do you think determines the perfomance of a chess program? or a parser? or a compiler? Once you stop hammering the disk, it’s the branch prediction that determines how fast the test works.
about marketshare:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=4052227&p1=0
“. it doesn’t matter what Apple’s market share is as long as they’re profitable. As long as they’re profitable, they’ll keep putting out computers and OS’s I want”
The problem with this is that they can only remain profitable till a limit with a declining market share. If they have a market share, of say, .8% (I’m not trying to predict apple’s doom), their revenues fall, and with lower revenues, they will make lower profits. Also, with a really low market share, app developers have little incentive to develop for the Mac Platform. The implications of this are not too serious for the short term but can add up in the long term. Apple knows this and that’s why is looking to new markets to stay profitable.
Havent you heard anything that’s being said here … declining market share by percentage doesnt mean decline in revenues. By percentage its getting smaller but by installed base its getting larger and larger. There are making more profits than they ever have before.
While the posters are making fun of Best let point this out.
Market Cap: Apple 8.41 Billion
Best Buy 17.1 Billion
hmmm
The figures usually quoted as “market share” are not market share at all. They are percentage of new computers sold. Wintels have a life span of about 3 years while Macs tend to have a life span of 5 years or more. As a result, fewer Macs are repurchased.
Further, the term “market share” is so loose it could mean anything. That figure also includes computers sold to be used as cash registers, not general purpose computers.
Put this all together, and Apple is one of the most successful computer companies out there, making good profits (as opposed to most other computer makers–even MS is doing poorly with their hardware sales) and actually has about 10-12 per cent of the market of general purpose computers in daily use.
Don’t believe everything you read.
SPEC inflates intel’s scores because the Branch predictions are a non issue. your ignorence over this prooves you to be lacking in the appropriate level of education in this area to be disscussing the facts.
Branch predictions non-issue in SPEC??? Yeah, compilers NEVER branch. If branch penalties don’t show up in SPEC, where DO they show up?
Do you think SPEC became an industry standard by ignoring one of the most important performance characteristics (branch performance) in modern processors?
Why use well-known, industry-standard crossplatform benchmarks, when you can use G5-optimized photoshop filters!
A simplified lesson in the dynamics of the semiconductor bussiness for the rest of you:
process technology = process R&D budget * some constant
performance = product R&D budget * process technology * some constant
(process R&D + product R&D) = sales volume * some constant
This gives:
performance = some constant * sales volume
(roughly, don’t take this literally mathematic)
THIS is what killed MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC, Motorola PowerPC in performance-sensitive markets. Whithout volume, no performance.
@Leslie Donaldson
Why are you feeding the apple bashing trolls?
Apple sells computers and a few select electronic gadgets. Best buys sells a lot more even refrigerators and washing machines. Should I quote Wal-mart’s market cap? Wal-marts sells almost everything else. You can do your grocery *and* get a tune-up at the same time. They even talked about selling used cars once IIRC.
Market share may matter for ensuring that third-party commerical software is produced for the Mac. In the case of particular software, though, the market for the software is more important than the market for the hardware — that is, it doesn’t matter to a software company if Apple has less than 2% of overall hardware sales, so long as (for example) sales of Mac versions of the software in question remain high. Of course, the question is whether these differentially higher percentages can be maintained in the face of declining hardware market share.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, it is often said that the Mac version of Office is profitable. If this is the case, given that Apple appears to lack the will and the ability to increase market share over Wintel, it does no harm to MS to continue to produce it. Additionally, drastic MS action against Apple may (given the noisiness and influence of Apple partisans) have PR and potentially legal (antitrust) ramifications that MS would wish to avoid. Also, I imagine it is important for MS to have a carrot and stick to use with Apple to influence it.
Apple’s other sources of software are (i) purely internal (expensive to maintain) and (ii) adaptations from the Linux and FOSS world. Of course, the later was witnessed with Safari. The Linux/FOSS world has much to gain in having Apple as an ally in the quest for open standards. Given their different markets (Apple, people with more money than patience for technical issues; Linux/FOSS, people with more patience for technical issues than money), there would seem to be great room for cooperation without directly competing with each other.
I suspect that, in the medium term, Apple will continue to play both sides, trying to remain on sufficiently peaceable terms with MS (and other commercial software developers) to keep the software flowing, while working with FOSS to develop Mac versions of important applications.
I dropped Windows XP and Redhat Linux for Mac os X Panther last month.
It’s an eMac G4 1Ghz and my very first Mac. Mac OS X is a great product for the desktop!
things to remember about those market share numbers…. they don’t count what is people’s primary box, or what they paid their own money for. they are straight up accounting numbers, not “mind-share” numbers.
those numbers imply that only 3 out of 100 computer users are mac users. that’s misleading. the number actually means that 3 out of every 100 machines made and sold is an apple. at work i have 3 pc’s. at home i have a mac. that’s 25% market share for the mac with regards to me only. but i use the mac 5x more than the PC’s, and i only paid for the mac.
i’m not disputing the numbers, just putting them into perspective. in my travels ‘mac people’ are actually more like 10-20% of the computer users as a whole.
also — when putting up market share numbers it’s important to put other manufacturers as well. apple is ultimately considered a hardware company because that is what drives their bottom line. their software department is far more advanced that any other hardware manufacturer out there, but they are still a hardware company. so if 3 out of 100 personal computers sold are apples, that doesn’t seem so bad. how many are dells, compaq’s, gateway’s, etc? i couldn’t imagine any of those big players having more than 20% market share.
OK I just dont get it(seriously). How does a:
Apple eMac M9252LL/A
1.0GHz PowerPC G4
128MB of SDRAM
40GB
ATI Radeon 7500
Monitor Included
$1,099.99(CDN)
outperform a
Cicero SH2640E
2.6GHz P4
512MB DDR
120 GB
ATI Radeon 9000
Monitor NOT included
$899.99(CDN)
Prices quoted from Futureshop
You might want to check your prices, because that same eMac is available from the Apple Store for $799. For $1099 the eMac also comes with a Superdrive more RAM and a bigger HD.
http://www.apple.com/emac/
You familiar with the abreviation CDN? It means Canadian as in Canadian dollars. I think thats accurate.
no…what I am saying is that the Branch predictions are Known quanteties in SPEC so their are never any failures.
Branch prediction failures are major costs as the pipline gets longer and they can occur often in real life computing.
so, if intel has a LOONNNNG Pipe line, even if it is wiked fast, it takes time to fill that pipe up again which causes the processor to have a total throughput that is not at its theorhetical max, and the more failures you get the father you are from your Theoretical Max.
THAT is why SPEC is not a benchmark that reflects reality, because there are never branch prediction failures.
“http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=E…
geez why are mac users so stupid?”
Jeebus, why are you so stupid as to extrapolate ONE post to include all mac users?
“declining market share by percentage doesnt mean decline in revenues. By percentage its getting smaller but by installed base its getting larger and larger.”
Ok, I can agree with that. I was thinking on the wrong track. With the number decling to 1.8% I thought that users were switching over to wintel, but the truth of the matter is that the installed base of all computers has increased therefore Apple has a proportionally less market share than before.
“There are making more profits than they ever have before.”
Not true. Apple posted profits of $63MM in the last quarter. That doesn’t compare to the hundreds of millions they were making in profits in the mid-80s. Profit margins for Apple back then were at a record 50%. I don’t know what it is currently. Still, the 63mil is a significant increase over the $8MM posted same time last year.
Ok, for simplicity…
If mac sales are 1.8% each year (vs. 98.2 for X86).
And mac users keep their computers say, five years on
average (vs. say, 3yr. for X86).
And 100 people are buying a year (for 5 years).
Sales = 9-mac vs. 491-X86
Throw away ALL the sales of X86 from the first two years.
Leaves 9 macs and 294.6 X86.
Hmm… 3.05% mac user share.
And that would be a “best case” senario.
Better get to selling those Ipods boys!
“OK I just dont get it(seriously). How does a:
Apple eMac M9252LL/A
1.0GHz PowerPC G4
128MB of SDRAM
40GB
ATI Radeon 7500
Monitor Included
$1,099.99(CDN)
outperform a
Cicero SH2640E
2.6GHz P4
512MB DDR
120 GB
ATI Radeon 9000
Monitor NOT included
$899.99(CDN)
Prices quoted from Futureshop”
JB, I don’t mean to pick on you but despite the fact that the specs of this machine is better it is doubtful that “Cicero” will be around in 2- 3 years. That alone makes the eMac better and “Cicero” doesn’t run MacOSX otherwise why would someone consider a Mac over a PC? Oh BTW the eMac includes a flat 17″ CRT and OK speakers and also has one power cord for the CPU monitor and sound and actually looks decent. Until “Cicero” starts making operating systems, servers, applications and has a decent legacy of at least 15- 20 years I’ll put my money on Apple in this instance.
What is the warranty on “Cicero”? Do they offer extended warranty? What is their customer support like? Is it top 10? Is it rated one of the highest for PC manufacturers?
This is a really bad example. These pricewatch comparisons are just plain dumb, you could of chose Dell or HP actually.
@ipod reseller
Hmm… 3.05% mac user share.
And that would be a “best case” senario.
As it turns out, that’s about the percentage of computers using Mac OSX that Google reports (3%); and IMHO that is by far a better measure of market share:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist_nov03.html
Look for “Operating Systems used to access Google”
oops, I mean “Mac”, not “Mac OS X”…
I’ve seen more than a few armchair CEOs suggesting Apple should port OS X to x86.
<p>
Let’s consider that proposition. BeOS and NeXT both had a nice x86 alternate OS. BeOS went bankrupt, NeXT (another seller of expensive hardware) was marginalized and sold to Apple to become Rhapsody then OS X.
<p>
Most people are satisified with Windows and don’t have any reason to switch. Linux users generally don’t want to pay money for software (an OS, especially), and will claim that XWindows/KDE/GNOME are just as good.
<p>
That leaves a very small number of people that might buy OS x86, and could alienate their core PPC users and developers.
no…what I am saying is that the Branch predictions are Known quanteties in SPEC so their are never any failures.
Branch prediction failures are major costs as the pipline gets longer and they can occur often in real life computing.
so, if intel has a LOONNNNG Pipe line, even if it is wiked fast, it takes time to fill that pipe up again which causes the processor to have a total throughput that is not at its theorhetical max, and the more failures you get the father you are from your Theoretical Max.
THAT is why SPEC is not a benchmark that reflects reality, because there are never branch prediction failures.
So you think that Intel can somehow “hardwire” the correct results of all the branching instructions of SPEC into their CPU? Or a compiler is somehow whispering hints for the CPU? Or a pixie shows up to assist it? There is simply no way to do it. Branch prediction of any CPU fails routinely during execution of SPEC.
I am not aware of what kind of education you have, but I highly suggest you to stop pulling statements out of your ass. You just have proven that you have completely no clue about branching prediction.
no…I think intel could shorten their Pipline like AMD and IBM so that a misprediction does not cost so much in throughput.
“OK I just dont get it(seriously). How does a:
Apple eMac M9252LL/A
1.0GHz PowerPC G4
128MB of SDRAM
40GB
ATI Radeon 7500
Monitor Included
$1,099.99(CDN)
outperform a
Cicero SH2640E
2.6GHz P4
512MB DDR
120 GB
ATI Radeon 9000
Monitor NOT included
$899.99(CDN)
Prices quoted from Futureshop”
Now they’re using typo’s to make their point.
The prices is $799 idiot(s)
I for one don’t give a damn if those 1,8% drop further. Apple is insignificant now and it won’t change my life when they are gone completely. Big deal. Lets talk about that sack of rice in China which I heard fell over last week.
Since this is an OS site, I would think that Apple is a bit more on topic than sack of rice in china.
And your inference that Apple wont change your life when they are gone completely,what a self centric close minded way to think.
I would hope inreal life you are a little more thoughtful than that.
I do not think an installed base of 10 million OS X users is bad for the world of computing as you imply.
So this IS the year linux surpasses mac in numbers
Maybe now those computer stores that have all of those macs will now start supporting linux more than mac? I hope so. Maybe all those companies that are porting their software to mac will port it to linux instead.
MDK why would Apple stores start supporting Linux? Thats stupid.
What company is making money in the Linux consumer desktop market?
Is Adobe porting all their software to Linux? How can a software publisher make money from a user base whose demographic is one which the userbase does not believe in paying for software? I know that is not what open-source is all about but I have not met a Linux user that was willing to pay for any software if they can get something “free” even if the functionality was marginal to horrible.
No, I wasn’t trolling. I really didn’t know, and never bothered to ask or search at tucows for Apple apps. In a nutshell: “When you’re not into graphic, music or video production, don’t bother with Macs.”
I guess, other potential buyers might be in a similar situation. It’s not only the price. That was my point.
However, thx very much for the infos.
well…you can run MSOffice, do internet activities, and do the Home movies make music with garage band, use Xcode and GCC to write programs, use the terminal for FTP and ssh, share printers and files with PCs and Macs, iTunes, iPhoto, every Linux app imaginable….. you can run Windows on a Mac and get any app that you need for work to run on that, the best games are ported over so unless you are a bleeding edge gamer, you will be satisfied with the 6 month lag….
all in all, the Mac makes a damn good home desktop and pro desktop.
I meant microcenter, compusa………….
and I pay for software, most linux users would
well its simple the emac does outperform the p4a
i tried osx on the p4 machine and it wouldnt peform at all
” …perhaps Apple should begin bundling and maintaining open source software on their well designed and integrated hardware.”
Gotta love it.
OSX is built on Darwin, an Open Source Unix descended from FreeBSD. One can boot directly into Darwin on any Mac running OSX, and have an entirely Command-Line experience without ever seeing a hint of the Aqua GUI. Within the OSX environment one can compile and run a huge assortment of Unix and, yes, Linux software. Apple includes powerful development tools with their OS (or as a free, though large, download).
I have also enjoyed the Linux fans complaining that OSX doesn’t have the number of Apps or the active development community of Linux. That’s just wrong — it has the same community, plus some little companies called Microsoft, Adobe, etc. developing for it as well.
The core OS may be open source, but the rest of OSX isn’t. If Apple really wanted to make a difference, they would make Cocoa open source.
Can you imagine, with an open Cocoa and X-Tools, OSX would be the development platform for choice. Design and build your apps on OSX and recompile them for Linux, Windows, Palm, Zaurus, whatever you want.
But sadly, that is not the case. Instead it looks like it will be .NET/Mono. 😐
Well, it’s not Apple’s aim to gain more market share, but to make money, and they do…
well Joesixpack, it doesn’t change that to me Apple is meaningless and will remain so. Denying the validity of that statement is rather close minded, isn’t it?
Kobold, it does not have to be hard wired….CPUs have Cache in them…Spec is set up so that the Cache fills up and in sequence. the CPU does not need to predict anything, what comes in is supose to be in and it never comes back.
since there is no guessing required to process sequencial data (that is what SPEC is…sequencial data streems being processed) you do not see the effects that Branch mispredictions have on the throughput of the CPU.