One of the high points of Apple's earnings for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011 was Mac sales, which came in well above expectations at a record 4.89 million units. On the earnings conference call, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that the strong sales were "almost unbelievable" considering continued growth in the iPad market.
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Cook noted that some customers are undoubtedly electing to purchase iPads instead of Macs, eating somewhat into potential Mac sales. But as Apple has noted several times since the introduction of the iPad, Apple still holds only a small part of the PC market and that cannibalization of Windows PCs by the iPad opens up a tremendous opportunity for the company.
Apple's previous record for quarterly Mac sales came in the first fiscal quarter of this year with 4.13 million units shipped, making this quarter's performance 18% higher than that record. Given the Apple's Mac sales typically increase sequentially for the holiday quarter each year, Apple should also be well-positioned for another strong performance on the Mac side to close out the calendar year.
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Now let's update the MacPro and bring that 30" ACD back!;)
While that may well be true, it's still considerably behind Apple in terms of integration and making things as easy and seamless as a Mac does.
The biggest reason is that Apple controls both hardware and the OS, so a Mac is much more tightly integrated than any Windows machine. Not a newsflash, I know, but still worth remembering.
I definitely think iOS devices lure customers to Macs.
It went:
- iTunes on Windows
- 10GB 3rd gen. iPod (still have it, HDD probably needs to be replaced otherwise works fine)
- Mac mini G4/1.42
- 12" PowerBook G4/1.5 - still using that one as my main laptop
- Mac mini Core 2 Duo
- Mac mini Core 2 Duo (unibody) - still using that one as my main desktop
So I'm guessing a lot of people who never used anything but Microsoft OS and software are sort of waking up about alternatives and buy an iPhone/iPad and then drop their PC to get a Mac soon after that.