February 2nd, 2000

[2:30 PM] Apple Number 1 Hardware Site, 26.6% More Visitors Than Number 2 by Staff PC Data has released the stats for web sites for the week ending 1/29/2000. iTools continues to pay dividends for the Apple as the company claimed the top spot for computer web sites for the first time. Last week, Apple had moved up to the number 3 hardware spot, also a first. Even more exciting for Mac fans, the company received more than 1 million unique visitors, 26.6% above the number 2 site, egghead.com. Among the PC manufacturers that Apple beat out last week is Compaq, Gateway, Dell, HP, Intel, and IBM. The other 3 sites on the list are retailers. The numbers according to PC Data: This Week Last Week Hardware Site % of Total Web Audience Reached Unique Users (000) 1 3 apple.com 2.0% 1,042 2 * egghead.com 1.6% 823 3 4 compaq.com 1.5% 812 4 1 gateway.com 1.5% 763 5 5 dell.com 1.4% 740 6 2 hp.com 1.4% 738 7 9 intel.com 0.7% 351 8 8 ibm.com 0.7% 346 9 6 ecost.com 0.6% 329 10 10 cdw.com 0.4% 205 The Mac Observer Spin: Holy web stats, Batman! Apple has taken criticism from many quarters over its Internet strategy called iTools, even from Mac sites. Some have called it useless and ineffectual, but apparently Apple knew better. Much of this traffic is very likely due to users of Apple's e-mail service, iReview, and iDisk, though a specific breakdown is not available. There is no doubt that the PC companies and the portal giants are taking notice of this success as well. They will likely be just as unable to duplicate this success as the PC manufacturers were at duplicating the iMac (so far). The real question is whether this traffic is turning into increased sales for the company. More important will be to see whether Apple can hold on to this traffic during upcoming weeks. Our guess is that they will do so as more and more people continue to use the iTools services. In related news, Apple is now taking donations to pay for the bandwidth costs for all of this web traffic. Just kidding. Apple