The Apple halo. Once seen as a way to boost products, the magnetic power of Apple’s complete iOS family – the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad – are now helping the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant blow past anemic PC sales. The latest evidence: Mac shipments in December 2010 rose 23.5 percent – seven-fold the PC market’s 3.4 percent. The iPad, again, gets the credit.
“The halo effect emanating from the iPad will be even stronger than the iPhone halo effect in the business market if only because the iPad is a kissing cousin of Apple’s family of notebook computers,” said Needham analyst Charlie Wolf. Just how strong the halo has become is glaringly obvious when you break down Apple’s success in various markets.
In the consumer market, Mac December shipments rose 17.1 percent, compared to the .6 percent decline in consumer PC shipments. The news is even better for Macs in the business market. Mac shipments grew 65.4 percent compared to an overall 9.7 percent growth rate. Government seems in love with Macs. Apple saw a 549.5 percent increase, dramatically higher than the overall 8.4 percent increase. (Of course, Mac sales to government is only 1 percent of all the Cupertino, Calif. company’s sales, but still impressive numbers.)
“The surge in Mac sales in the business market coincided with the introduction of the iPad in the second quarter of 2010,” Wolf said. Although a clear cause and effect cannot be made, “in less than a year, the iPad has been deployed or piloted in 80 of the Fortune 100 companies, and it is reasonable to assume the device has invaded smaller businesses at a similar pace,” the analysts adds.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
