Dell
Pie chart of the day: Apple's oversize share of PC profits
April 16, 2013: 2:53 PM ETIn the last quarter of 2012, Apple had 5% of the global PC market and 45% of the profit.
FORTUNE -- Everybody who follows the computer industry knows that Apple's (AAPL) Mac trails far behind its Microsoft (MSFT) Windows-based competitors -- Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL), Lenovo and the like -- in terms of worldwide PC shipments.
But who knew what the market looked like in terms of economic value?
Leave it to Asymco Horace Dediu to boil it down to a pie chart (above) and a simple ratio: Apple sells 5% of the world's PCs and takes home 45% of the profit.
"The real problem for the PC vendors," he writes in an article posted Tuesday, "is not that they have such low margins -- they've had low margins for decades. It's that the volumes which 'made up for' low margins are disappearing. Apple is not immune to a gradual erosion of Mac volumes, but they have positioned themselves for growth with devices and content commerce and services. They have essentially 'escaped' PCs and indeed caused the need to escape in the first place.
"The problem is what could the others do? It seems all they can do is depend on Microsoft getting their strategy right.
"Sounds risky."
Link: Escaping PCs.
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The only PC maker escaping the crunch
Lenovo is the single PC manufacturer that is doing well. And even that company's worldwide sales are flat.
FORTUNE -- Let's say the definition of "PC" is the same one we applied five years ago, before tablets. By that definition, the market seems to be collapsing.
Shipments of PCs in the first quarter fell by 13.9% from the same quarter in 2012. The forecast decline had been 7.7%, according to International Data MORE
Dan Mitchell, contributor - Apr 11, 2013 2:44 PM ET -
Today in Tech: YouTube reports 1 billion users
Also: Why Google can Keep it to itself.
YouTube reaches 1 billion unique monthly users, almost 15% of planet Earth [THE NEXT WEB]
Google says that the video site reaches almost one out of every two people on the Internet. Its monthly viewership would make it the planet's third-largest country, behind China and India.
These feats are all the more interesting considering that Google was criticized for over-paying for the site when it bought MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer - Mar 21, 2013 2:00 PM ET -
Michael Dell eats his words
Revisiting Dell's famous prescription for Apple, 15 years later
"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders" -- Michael Dell, Oct. 6, 1997, when asked what he would do if he ran Apple.
On Tuesday, Dell entered into an agreement with Silver Lake to acquire Dell (DELL), the company he founded in 1984, for $24.4 billion.
Apple (AAPL), despite the drubbing its share price has taken, MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 5, 2013 10:46 AM ET -
Apple's Mac sales fell (IDC) or grew (Gartner) last quarter
Why can't the two leading PC market tracking firms get their acts together?
FORTUNE -- In separate reports on the state of the worldwide personal computer market issued Wednesday, Gartner and IDC agreed about one thing: The quarter that ended in June was a miserable one for traditional PC vendors.
Gartner called the market "flat." IDC's term was "stalled." Both reported a decline in global shipments of 0.1%. Both attributed it to MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 11, 2012 7:00 PM ET -
Silicon Valley's new fashion: The stock dividend
Over the past two decades, investing earnings in buybacks or future growth has trumped the stodgy old dividend and nowhere more so than in the tech industry. That is changing.
By Kevin Kelleher, contributor
FORTUNE -- As long as there have been dividends, there have been arguments between shareholders and company managers over whether to pay them. The strongest argument against paying dividends was profit growth: If a company can reinvest MORE
Jun 29, 2012 6:44 AM ET -
How Apple's cash hoard gets to $200 billion by next year
With that, it could buy Intel, HP and Dell and still have change left over
FORTUNE -- Bullish Cross' Andy Zaky has published his estimates for Apple's (AAPL) projected growth in cash and marketable securities through the end of fiscal 2013.
If Apple's earnings grow as he expects, the company's holdings -- currently at $110 billion -- will reach $205 billion by September 2013. That's more than the combined market caps of MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 1, 2012 10:59 AM ET -
Why are blue-chip tech stocks so blue?
May -- not April -- was the cruelest month for quality tech stocks. And not just because of the botched Facebook IPO.
By Kevin Kelleher, contributor
FORTUNE -- April, as T.S. Eliot famously said, is the cruelest month. But for investors who put their faith in tech stocks, it's hard to look back on the past month and feel good. No, the merry month of May has been cruel. And there's MORE
May 31, 2012 6:01 AM ET -
Chart of the day: Apple's iPad as the PC market's cutting edge
The traditional personal computer business is shrinking. The tablet is just taking off
FORTUNE -- Asymco's Horace Dediu put this chart together Wednesday after Dell's (DELL) earnings miss -- the first in which management acknowledged the competition from Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG). Dediu writes:
"And so, two years later, the impact of the iPad is becoming abundantly clear, even to the incumbents. The resistance and denial was profound. Even on this blog, the agitation MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 24, 2012 7:15 AM ET -
The Dell dilemma
Five years after Michael Dell returned to lead the PC maker he founded, Dell may actually be ready for a second act. The next several months will be dicey. Here's what to watch for.
By Kevin Kelleher, contributor
FORTUNE -- Is Dell finally turning a corner? Five years after Michael Dell returned to lead the PC maker he founded and transformed into a colossus, Dell may actually be ready for a second MORE
Apr 6, 2012 5:00 AM ET
