While U.S. sales of PCs are expected to amount to 66 million units in 2006, domestic sales growth has dropped to zero, and significant growth is seen only outside the U.S according to a report from IDC released Wednesday.
"Despite the warnings, many companies failed to see the change coming. Dell Inc. and Intel Corp. have both said they shortchanged their revenue in recent quarters by slashing prices to preserve market share," according to coverage at InfoWorld on Thursday. In recent conference calls, Dell and Intel admitted that they didnit see this coming.
In direct contrast, Apple sold 1.32 million Macs in their fiscal Q3 2006, a 12 percent year-over-year growth, and they sold 1.61 million Macs in Q4 2006, a 30% year-over-year growth. Overall PC growth is about 9 percent. Apple has claimed that Macintosh market share is rising, and this data confirms that claim.
However, the causes are not clear. Many businesses could be holding off on replacement systems in order to size up Vista. On the other hand, many other companies have said they wonit roll out Vista until many month of compabibility testing are completed in 2007 and are still buying PCs. The visibility of Apples Get A Mac TV ads and Microsoftis security woes with Windows are other factors. Whatever the causes, Appleis world-wide sales growth of Macs is enormously greater than PC sales growth as we come to the end of 2006.