Originally Posted by CaptainRaiden
Without quoting specific parts of the above two posts, since I'm in a hurry, I'll just say this: I agree that Apple has had solid and steady growth against PC manufacturers, namely Dell and HP, and that they have sold a hell of a lot of computers, especially Macbooks recently. I am also aware that while Dell and HP sold twice the computers than Apple over the last year or so, they actually made a loss. So, yes, Apple did make a sizable dent on the computer market against its two main competitors.
Why I don't consider them "true competitors" is for a couple of reasons. First, Apple's US share (only computers, not tablets or smartphones) is around 11% and the worldwide share is a little over 4%. That has moved slightly over the last 4-5 years. Yes, sure, maybe PC brands are not enjoying the same amount of success and profits as Apple is, but that doesn't change the fact that still PC outsells Apple computers by a big margin worldwide, and it is still the preferred choice of a majority of buyers all over the world. And of course, this is not even taking into account how many separate PC components are sold daily and how many people simply buy the components and assemble the PC themselves. I personally know at least 10 people who have built PCs off and on over years and still update their hardware on a regular basis.
US and UK are two of the biggest markets for Apple, but that's still quite a small chunk when we talk about the whole world. For example, in India corporations prefer PCs because it helps them keep their costs down dramatically and deliver pretty much the same quality, which is crucial when American or European companies outsource their work to these firms. Same can be said of many other future big economies in Asia. For personal users in India, you can buy components at a big discount from small computer firms who will assemble the PC and even install the OS for you at a fraction of a cost of a Dell or an HP computer. I don't even wanna begin to get into how much cheaper they are compared to iMacs!! And so a lot of corporations, in my experience, have bought such PCs and hired one or two technicians who do the PC maintenance and also handle servers and networking. This saves a HUGE amount of money for them and makes good sense for business.
Another big factor, and this I have seen in US, Asia and Europe, is many corporations' and users' unwillingness to move away from Windows XP. It's the "If it's not broken, why fix it" attitude. And because of Vista's failure, people were apprehensive in switching over to Windows 7, and this prevents Windows 7 from fully being implemented. Apple doesn't have this problem. This, coupled with regular revamping and revisions of the Mac OS X more recently has meant Apple has enjoyed quite a lot of success lately.
Despite this, Windows 7 still is the most used OS in the world, and more Windows 7 laptops are sold than Macbooks, yes, not at a huge profit, but they are still selling more nonetheless. Once the full implementation of Windows 7 happens worldwide, and the Windows 8 onslaught begins, I expect PC sales to pick up massively. Only time will tell.
