Apple Climbs To The No. 4 Spot In Notebook Sales
This is the story of the little ‘apple’ that could and reflects what some see as a change in the industry now that Apple holds the No. 4 spot in notebook sales. But what is also interesting in the latest sales figures is that Dell is missing from the top stops. Notebook sales show that HP, Toshiba and Gateway hold the honors for the top 3 spots in notebook sales. Sales figues from the NPD also indicate that desktop sales continue their slide as notebooks continue to become more popular.
As more home and small businesses switch to wireless, which has become more common, the benefits of the portability that a notebook has far out weighs the boxy desktop systems with their tangle of wire. Now that the newer botebook cpu’s have gained the power of a desktop, this only adds to the notebooks popularity.
I had previously mentioned that I didn’t think those Apple vs PC commercials would do much good. Oops! Maybe people are watching those commercials more closely than I first suspected. Another thought is that people are giving Vista a luke warm welcome. Or maybe it is all of the favorable press Apple has gotten recently as the iPod hit the million mark, the introduction of the iPhone or maybe it is the consumers who are starting to recognize that Apples are a better system.
What ever the reasoning, 2007 continues to be one of the most interesting years for change in the technology field. If Apple continues to gain market share, and if Google continues offering more online applications, and if Vista continues its ho-hum appeal this could be the year that will go down in history as the year one company in particular started to see one leg of its thrown being sawed off. 
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
2 Comments
Dave A.
June 26th, 2007
at 5:16pm
WIndows makes more sense for a desktop, and Mac makes more sense for a laptop. Why? “Proprietary hardware”.
Apple’s business model is based on proprietary hardware. Advanced computer users who like to build their own desktop PC’s don’t WANT proprietary hardware: they want a computer that they can repair and upgrade quickly and affordably, at home, themselves. (the “Mac Mini” would be these users’ worst nightmare!) These users can still install XP on their homebuilt PC instead of Vista (as of 2007) if they wish, to they get a ‘free pass’ out of the many Vista issues. (yes, this is the market that wishes they could run OS-X on their homebuilt boxes!) Apple doesn’t want to cater to this (large) market, they want to sell their profitable proprietary hardware along with OS-X.
When you get to laptops, though, ALL laptops are “proprietary hardware”!
Most new Vista latops can’t be ‘downgraded’ to XP, even if you wanted to.
And, laptops in general still have less performance than same-cost desktops, and on Vista the loss in performance will be more noticable than it was in XP. (and laptops are harder to upgrade)
Add to this that Mac OS-X is more secure from viruses and malware (alhtough NOT data-logging and key-logging!) in a public Wi-Fi setting where laptops are commonly used (duh!), and it makes sense even for the “Gamer” with the $4K killer homebuilt XP rig to buy a Mac laptop, for those occasions when he DOES get out of the basement and wants to surf the web at Starbucks….
Ron Schenone
June 26th, 2007
at 5:38pm
Hello Dave A.,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your comments.
Regards, Ron