Hey look Asymco analyzed Gartner data too

While I published my data on late Saturday night it seems that Horace Dediu was working on somethign similar, using Gartner data.

This is Asymco

Source: Asymco

Here’s my data (or better both of our data is Gartner’s data)

Q3/2011 Global PC Sales

That’s looking quite alright doesn’t it?
(please note: my graph starts two quarters earlier and ends one quarter earlier than Asymco’s)

This graph is different from my graphs from my earlier post, but the data is the same. So why does it look different? Market share is simply units shipped by a company devided by total units shipped by all vendors meaning the lines of my other graph which I post here again for the readers‘ convenience, are raised or lowered depending on how many OVERALL units were shipped in a quarter. In this graph here if all sales by all manufacturers are 100 million and you produce 15 million PCs like HP, you have a 15% share. If they all just produce 75 million the following year and you still produce 15 million (and ship them) your share rises by 100/75 = 1.33 (from 15% to 20%).

That’s how the dents in HPs line for instance get smoothed. Dediu showed that while HP still produces a ton of PCs, between 15 and 17 million in the last couple of years, their market share now falls.

Q3/2011 Global Market Share (with iPad)

So what can we take away from this?

IMHO opinion this shows that the iPad is something that cannibalizes the Netbook Market, nothing more, nothing less.

John Gruber in the past was joking a lot about people who said „Apple needs to build a Netbook“, but in the end they kind of did. Acer’s market share was mostly made up of Netbook sales. Those are now gone and cannibalized by Apple with the iPad. That there is still room for improving yourself and/or your product is shown by Lenovo. They gain in units shipped and market share. Dell stays the same, as does HP.

While HP and Dell lose market share, they still sell the same amount of PCs. Of course it’s a given that they don’t GAIN in share and they don’t have any stake in the tablet market (I can’t say anything substantial about the netbook market concerning HP or Dell but I think they left that segment a year ago. Please feel free to drop me a a note in the comments if that isn’t so).

The real genius about this whole thing is: Apple is building a device that is essentially BETTER than any netbook AND they manage to make a huge profit producing and selling these devices at round about 200 US$ more than the standard netbook. THEY manage to make a profit while Acer didn’t. The real loser here is Acer and the Netbook Market.

To me the PC market is healthy again after the dip in the last years.

Look at the total numbers shipped according to Gartner:

Q3/2011 Global Total PCs Shipped (PCs = without iPad)

The dip in 2008/2009 is because of the housing market collapsing in the US which took down the world’s economy.

But looking at the data PC makers are today shipping more than 10 million more PCs than back at the beginning of 2008 when there was no crisis. That is a growth of 15% in four years. The global economy is currently said to have gone bust but when you look at PC sales the only thing you can take away is that they weathered the storm and are doing fine again with a normalized growth of about 4% a year. More than the inflation rate meaning a net-growth of at least a percent. The market is basically back to where it came from.

Again, anybody who says that Apple is cannibalizing the market is reading the numbers wrong, at least at the moment. Leo Apotheker’s decision to get rid of HPs PC devision to me is sheer idiocy. Even more so looking at what they wanted to do (go the same path IBM walked and focus on business customers) when you look at IBMs former end-user PC business which is now Lenovo – they are thriving.

The key aspect of all this is: Tim Cook.

None of the numbers above are giving revenue. And this is where Apple is clearly the Juggernaut at the moment. Cook managed to let Apple produce a Netbook killer that rakes in profits that are so high it must make any other PC maker’s eyes water.

The reason why HP would consider getting rid of their PC division is because they admit they aren’t able to make the big bucks in an environment controlled by Intel and Microsoft.

And looking at the fact that MS is now getting Windows 8 ready for the ARM platform can only mean good things for the consumer.

Because there will always be a manufacturer who is willing to tear into their own profits to gain market share (like Acer). If that happens in a non-monopolistic market like the Wintel-Market in the past, this can only mean either lower price or higher quality of the product. Apple already covered the quality aspect so if you ask me it is understandable why Joshua Topolsky is so smitten with Windows 8 for Tablets Arm Platforms.

In the end, Apple did us all a favor.

Including the IBM-PC „Fanboys“.