Market Share

Latest comScore data: Android market exploding

According to the latest numbers from comScore, Android is the only major smartphoneOS that is growing, taking market from RIM, Apple, Microsoft and Palm.

From February to May of this year, the Android platform grew an incredible 45%, from 9% of the total US smartphone market to 13%, according to comScore.  That share was pulled from the other four smartphone market leaders as shown by the chart at the right.

Overall, the smartphone MORE

Android demolishing iPhone in sales

NPD says that in the first three months of 2010, Android captured 28% of the smartphone market, while Apple's iPhone grabbed only 21%.

Google's army of Android phones managed to pass the iPhone in market share in the U.S. for the first time last quarter.  NPD analyst Ross Rubin attributed the strong sales to Verizon's buy-one-get-one deals.  Android phones have been discounted heavily as well.

NPD's numbers come from self-reported online consumer MORE

The magic of 285 Apple Stores

How the company's growing retail presence is driving Mac market share gains

In a report to clients issued overnight Monday about Apple's (AAPL) opportunities for growth in China, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty adds, almost as a throwaway, the instructive charts at right (see also below the fold).

They show what she calls the "Positive Correlation Between Apple Store Expansion and Mac Market Share."

Correlation does not mean causation, of course, but the trends MORE

Did Apple iPad hype turn off buyers?

There's more than one way to look at a before-and-after survey

"The more people know about the iPad," writes David Coursey in PC World, "the less they want to buy one."

That's how Coursey interprets the results of a survey published Friday by Retrevo, an online electronics marketplace that polls its 4 million users from time to time on a variety of topical issues.

"There was too much hoopla," co-founder Manish Rathi MORE

The iPhone grabs/loses market share

Apple's iconic smartphone is going gangbusters! No, it's suffering from "Razr burn"!

Shortly before noon on Monday, James Rogers, writing for TheStreet.com, reported that "Apple (AAPL) is grabbing market share from its smartphone rivals." His source: a Strategy Analytics report that showed Apple's market share growing to 16.4% in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 10.8% a year earlier -- a 52% increase.

A couple hours later, Niraj Sheth, writing for MORE

Macs grab record U.S. market share

Gartner puts Apple at 8.8%, IDC at 9.4%. This bodes well for next week's earnings report

Apple (AAPL) computers sold surprisingly well in a shaky economy last quarter, according to a pair of preliminary reports issued Wednesday by Gartner and IDC.

The big winner this summer was Acer, which became the world's undisputed No. 2 computer maker, after Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), on the strength of netbooks that sell for under $400.

But Mac sales MORE

Will Windows 7 boost Apple sales?

Over the past decade, Mac shipments have grown with nearly every new Microsoft release

As if Steve Ballmer didn't have enough to worry about after last week's Sidekick/Microsoft (MSFT) Danger debacle, here's a bar graph that may add to his miseries.

The graphic (shown full-size below the fold) comes out of a report to clients issued Monday by Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall. Anticipating the release of Windows 7 next week (Oct. MORE

Net Applications: Apple just lost half its 'market share'

The so-called market share reports issued every month by Net Applications have long been controversial -- mostly because they didn't actually measure market share (which business people typically express as the number of widgets they sell in a given period divided by the total number of widgets sold).

What Net Applications did instead was sample data from browsers visiting their clients' websites and report what percentage came from machines running Windows, MORE

Why Apple's shares rose as its market share shrank

On Wednesday, Gartner Research reported that Apple's (AAPL) share of the U.S. computer market, which topped 9% in calendar Q3 last year, dropped to 7.4% in Q1 2009 -- putting it in fourth place behind HP (HPQ), Dell (DELL) and Acer.

The next day, Apple's share price rose nearly 2% to finish Thursday at $121.45, its highest close in six months.

Why the disconnect? Chalk it up to the ASPs.

As Gartner's Mikako MORE

Despite everything, Mac sales grew year-to-year

CEO Steve Jobs may be struggling with health problems, but sales of Apple's computers seem to be holding up.

In a holiday quarter in which the PC industry recorded dismal growth -- its worst since 2002, according to Gartner Research -- Apple (AAPL) sold more than 1.25 million Macintosh systems in the United States, up 8.3% from the same quarter last year.

Domestic shipments of Dell (DELL) computers, by contrast, were down MORE