Video Analysis: Mac vs. PC With Some iPad Help

Thanks for the feedback on my last Padcast on Xiaomi. This will likely be the last one I do for free for a while. I will do more of these for our subscribers on key industry points. If you liked these and are not a subscriber I encourage you to subscribe to our industry insider analysis service.

In this video analysis/padcast I took a look at some data related to growth rates of the PC industry and the Mac. I added some points, I think are interesting, about iPad’s mixed in with Mac Sales as well. If you have the Perspecive iOS app from Pixxa, then you can click this link and watch my story on the app, pause it and interact with my charts and data yourself should you please.

UPDATE: I realized after I used the wrong number for Apple’s share of PC sales in 2013 and YTD 2014. I talked through this on the last slide. This is the correct slide. Apologies.

Screen Shot 2014-10-14 at 6.15.13 PM
Video length = 5 Min.

[fluidvideo url=”//player.vimeo.com/video/108943735″]

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Ben Bajarin

Ben Bajarin is a Principal Analyst and the head of primary research at Creative Strategies, Inc - An industry analysis, market intelligence and research firm located in Silicon Valley. His primary focus is consumer technology and market trend research and he is responsible for studying over 30 countries. Full Bio

6 thoughts on “Video Analysis: Mac vs. PC With Some iPad Help”

  1. A few questions:
    – what about Lenovo’s tablet sales ? They’re selling OK numbers of Android tablets (about a fifth of Apple’s sales: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2014/02/03/apples-ipad-losing-share-to-samsung-and-lenovo/ ), should those be included too ? Ditto for the other OEMs ?
    – How important is whitebox / DIY ? A non-negligible share of individuals and even companies buy or build bespoke PCs (gamers; all of Google’s and Facebook’s servers…). Do these even show up in the aggregate figures (ie, 1 retail motherboard sale = 1 PC)
    – Ditto for peripherals. Almost all Macs include an Apple screen, keyboard, mouse; a lot of PCs don’t, especially but not only in the gamer segment ($20b/yr according to John Peddie http://jonpeddie.com/publications/pc_gaming_hardware_market_report/ )
    – Since hardware is only a small part of the ecosystem, do we have any idea of what the whole picture, including software and services, is ? For example, http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-2013/ states that 65% of MS’s Windows revenues are for OEM sales, which means 35% are retail and licensing. Is that accounted for somewhere ? That’s the most basic level, I’d be curious to know how the whole economies of MacOS and Windows are faring.

    1. Point 1: I know this is controversial to include tablets in with PC vendors, which is why I shifted the focus to only include the large iPad in with Macs to get their real number for a true comparison. Yes other vendors sell very low-cost 7-8 inch Android tablets but those fall into the more media category than a PC in terms of usage.

      Point 2: I didn’t include others in the chart but I could have. White box/DIY is relatively small comparatively and those sales will show up in Intel numbers and Nvidia and AMD/ATI.

      Point 3: Peripherals are tracked separately. This was a focus on the vendor more branded PC market. Most desktops today do come with display and mouse/keyboard. Desktops are also heavily enterprise focused not consumer in their sales mix.

      Point 4: In a grander narrative of the entire PC ecosystem would you focus on broader software and services sales but of course they would be broken out. From an industry analyst viewpoint when we say PC industry we are talking specifically about hardware OEMS and PC hardware i.e computers.

      1. 1- Do we have any stats on what %age of even large iPads are used regularly (every week ?) for PC-like work (as opposed, I guess, to phone-like tasks ie quick emails and viewing docs) ? Counting all 10″ iPads as PCs seems very generous (my guess would be 10%, tops…). Especially if counting 0% of the large and small Android tablets, around me PC use seems rather ecosystem-agnostic… scratch that, total PC use seems equivalent, ie higher %age of iPads, but a lot fewer of them.

        2- Indeed, but Intel/AMD/nVidia don’t show up in the “PC sales” stats (neither should they, most of it would be double-counting). If whitebox is, say, 10% of the market, that’s 10% that just doesn’t show up in the stats.

        3- and 4- OK, but then we’re indeed comparing companies, not markets.

        I think our own cases strongly bias our world view. You probably use your own iPad for work a lot, so want to count all iPads as work. I build PCs for everyone around me, so whenever I see PC stats with only OEMs, I think of the 10 PCs closest to me, none of which show up in those stats, nor their OSes, screens…

        1. We are actually tracking / estimating enterprise iPad sales vs. Consumer. I have quite a bit of usage activity stats on iPad users across the board but a pure consumer focus. There is way more than enough usage data in favor of iPad vs. other tablets that I’m comfortable its capabilities are used in ways that are unlike other tablets.

          Agree with you on the portion of white box. It’s less than 10% and a great component side analysis / stat, but there is a reason all of our firms focus on brands and vendors. It serves a specific purpose from an analysis standpoint as from showing industry health, trend lines for the category, etc.

          We have PC industry revenue statistics also that include all those points. But obviously in a short column I can’t go too deep on every point. That’s what this now over 10,000 word report (and growing) on PCs and tablets for my firms clients is for. 🙂

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