A new analyst report out Tuesday highlights how ‘spin’ can affect how one reads the dry numbers of sales and shipments. For instance, Needham analyst Charlie Wolf chose to overlook the Mac’s 4.36 percent share of the PC market for the last quarter, instead concentrating a note to investors on how Apple’s growth is drubbing the otherwise tepid PC market. Mac shipments grew in September by 28.5 percent, far outstripping the 9.7 percent growth for PCs.
Additionally, Mac sales are firing on all cylinders propelled by the triple-threat halos from the iPod, iPhone and iPad. But wait, there’s even more good news. Mac shipments to business and home are exceeding those of PCs, according to researchers at IDC. Mac shipments to business during the third-quarter of 2010 were up 66.3 percent and grew 25.3 percent for the home market. That compares with overall business computer shipment growth of 8.5 percent and home growth of 10.4 percent.
However, a third point has caught most headlines. Apple became the U.S. home market leader, in terms of dollars, according to IDC. Although the Cupertino, Calif. company had just 12.2 percent of overall sales, Apple’s 29.4 percent of the dollar share was listed ahead of HP’s 20.6 percent and Dell’s 12.9 percent, according to Wolf.
While encouraging, the dollar figure amount was calculated by IDC which indicated a sharp increase in the average price of a Mac sold in the United States. This departed from Apple’s September report, which found the Mac’s average selling price was flat compared to June.
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.
