Apple Unit Sales Growth Higher than PC Unit Growth, Says CEO

by Anton Shilov
06/09/2005 | 09:53 PM

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs is confident that sales of Macintosh computers are on the rise and will continue to grow eventually. The head of Apple, who last year controlled only about 1% of the PC market, claims that unit growth of Macintosh computers sold exceeds the level of typical personal computers.

“Mac is doing really great right now… Nine months ago the Mac took off in terms of growth rates and it grew over 40%. So, the last quarter the Mac grew at three times the rate of the industry and we are pretty excited about that,” said Steve Jobs at the at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this week.

In 2004 Apple’s market share in the USA was 3.2% among all desktops, up from 2.9% in 2003, according to Gartner Dataquest. According to figures from IDC, Apple commanded 2.9% of U.S. desktop shipments in the Q4 2004, up from 2.2% in Q3 2004 and from 2.1% in Q4 2003.

A slide from Apple's presentation

“If we look at the PC market, the growth has slowed down a little bit from just under 20% five quarters ago to just over 10% today,” Mr. Jobs said.

The comments made by Apple’s chief reflect analysts estimations about significant market share growth Mac computers may face in the near future due to popularity of the iPod music players. For instance, based on a survey of 400 Apple iPod owners, which demonstrated 19% of PC owners’ intention to convert their PCs to Mac, analysts from Morgan Stanley predicted that Apple’s Mac computers will account for 5% of all desktop [U.S.] sales already this year.

The fashion for Mac driven by the iPod player is probably also not a news for the company itself: in late 2004, weeks ahead of the Mac Mini launch, sources close to the company indicated that with almost every player the company sold, its new clients were asking for cheaper Mac computers, as Windows users wanted to try the Mac as their second personal computer. Now that Apple announced intention to switch to Intel processors even more users may jump on Macintosh bandwagon.