Those of you who follow these sorts of things will be happy to know that, after hovering around the 2-3 percent mark for about 15 years, Apple now has 5 percent share of the world computer market, according to analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co.
Most of that growth has been due to a recent jump in enterprise sales as well as explosive growth in Asia. During the September quarter, Mac shipments grew 24.6 percent while the rest of the market only grew about 5.3 percent, making it the 22nd consecutive quarter where Apple’s growth outpaced the computer market as a whole.
Much of this has been due to its growth in the business market, where it saw a 43.8 percent increase over the 4.8 percent the rest of the market saw. The home market had similar (if less dramatic) numbers, showing a 25.6 percent increase to the the total growth of four percent. In fact, the only place where it seemed to fall short of the industry as a whole was in its traditional stronghold of the “education” sector, where Apple’s 2.9 percent growth is considerably lower than the 16.9 percent for the market in general.
Both the business and home user gains seem to be due to the iPad and iPhone. While the iPad, with its simpler interface, seems to be eating into Mac sales (as well as other computers) in the education market, iDevice “halo effect” in businesses and homes has users buying the computer these devices were originally designed to work with.
Can Apple keep up this monumental growth streak? We’ll see.
Note that this article is about worldwide market share.
Apple went over 10% market share in the US a short while back. (I can’t find the articles right now due to this new report swamping Google News results.)