Apple Grabs 19% of U.S. Consumer Electronics Dollars in Holiday Quarter

Apple captured "19 percent of all sales dollars" of consumer electronics sales in the U.S. during the holiday quarter of 2011 according to NPD. Not coincidentally, the holiday season was also the best quarter in Apple's history.

Not only was Apple by far the most successful consumer electronics brand for the second year in a row, Apple Retail has the third most revenue of any electronics retailer, coming in behind only Best Buy and Walmart. Apple was the only brand in the top five to post a sales increase from 2010, with receipts for 2011 rising more than 36 percent in the U.S. on the back of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

winhwvwc1781922244479590587
Tablet sales have more than doubled as a share of consumer electronics dollars, going from 5.1 to 10.7 percent. That's especially good news for Apple -- the iPad's 40 million units sold made up nearly 60 percent of tablet sales in 2011.

HP, Samsung, Sony, and Dell all saw declines in sales from 2010 to 2011, according to NPD's report, with Sony and Dell taking the biggest hits.

Popular Stories

streaming black friday 2025

Black Friday Streaming Deals Include Big Savings on Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV, and More

Monday November 24, 2025 8:03 am PST by
We've been focusing on deals on physical products over the past few weeks, but Black Friday is also a great time of year to purchase a streaming membership. Some of the biggest services have great discounts for new and select returning members this week, including Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and more. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a...
iOS 26

iOS 26.2 Adds These New Features to Your iPhone

Thursday November 20, 2025 10:50 am PST by
iOS 26.2 is currently in beta testing. The upcoming update includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, including a new Liquid Glass slider for the Lock Screen's clock, offline lyrics for Apple Music, and more. In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 26.2 will be released to all users in December, but it did not provide a specific release date. Keep reading...
iOS 26 on Three iPhones

iOS 27 Will Reportedly Have Two Key Upgrades

Sunday November 23, 2025 8:48 am PST by
iOS 27 will reportedly have two major elements: quality improvements and new AI features. In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that iOS 27 will be similar to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, in the sense that Apple is focused on improving "quality and underlying performance" over adding new features. Gurman said there is one exception to this rule, though, as he expects...
maxresdefault

The MacRumors Show: iPhone 18 Pro Looks Like a Huge Upgrade

Friday November 21, 2025 9:10 am PST by
On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we talk through all of the new features and improvements expected to come to next year's iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max models. Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos Apple's next-generation iPhones are less than ten months away and we already have a good idea about what to expect based on corroborated leaks, rumors,...
General Black Friday Deals 25 Red

Apple Black Friday Deals Available Now on AirPods, iPads, Accessories, and More

Friday November 21, 2025 8:48 am PST by
We're only a few days away from Black Friday, which will take place on Friday, November 28 in 2025. As always, this will be the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more. In this article, the majority of the discounts will be found on Amazon. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When...
Apple Shopping Event 2025

Apple Announces 2025 Black Friday Event, Here's What You Can Get

Thursday November 20, 2025 6:28 am PST by
Apple's annual four-day Black Friday through Cyber Monday shopping event is returning on Friday, November 28 through Monday, December 1 in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand, and others. During the shopping event, customers can get an Apple gift card with...
hikawa phone grip stand apple%402x

Apple Launches Second Limited-Edition iPhone Accessory in a Month

Friday November 21, 2025 3:53 am PST by
Apple has begun selling the Hikawa Phone Grip and Stand, a new limited-edition iPhone accessory designed with accessibility in mind. Designed by LA-based Bailey Hikawa to celebrate the 40th anniversary of accessibility at Apple, the grip uses magnets to securely snap onto any iPhone with MagSafe. Apple says it can be removed with ease, and doubles as a stand with two different viewing...
apple news banner

Apple News Loses CNN

Monday November 24, 2025 7:56 am PST by
American multinational news company CNN has abruptly pulled its content from Apple News, Semafor reports. CNN quietly removed its stories from Apple News over the weekend and there is no longer a feed from the network to subscribe to in the app. This effectively ends its distribution agreement with Apple while the two sides negotiate new terms. Discussions are apparently ongoing and CNN's...

Top Rated Comments

JAT Avatar
180 months ago
That was the dot-com bubble, genius.
Yeah. What is the rip for? Am I not allowed to reference it? I don't happen to like that name, so I don't use it. Deal with it.

Please, continue to down vote me because I know how to comprehend sentences. Thank you.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rodimus Prime Avatar
180 months ago
Double dipping? The revenue would only count once per category. And once overall.

It would just seem odd to me to eliminate what could be the most popular device for playing video games from the video game player market because it also has another purpose. (Hypothetically. I have no idea if the iPod touch or the iPhone is the most popular.)

Simple when you add all the categories up it should add up to around 100%+/-. The amount off should only be from rounding errors in said chart so less than 1%

Double dipping causes it to be thrown off and makes it harder to track how each market is growing or shrinking because you double dip.

As it shows over 58% of the market is electronic toys.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Consultant Avatar
180 months ago
That means Apple definitely needs to copy what its competitors are doing or Apple will be doomed! ;)
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Lesser Evets Avatar
180 months ago
What "Video Game Hardware" does Apple make ?

This chart isn't Apple... it's the percentage of stuff purchased in the holiday season according to the top 5 categories. You add up the categories and it comes out to around 60+% of all dollars spent in the time span recorded.

Not sure how it directly relates to the story, but it gives an indication of what has sold and how it has increased or decreased. It shows that tablet sales doubled this year and the article says Apple sold 60% of those tablets...

You gotta do the math, but it's just a graphic to say Apple is making s---loads of cash these days.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
eawmp1 Avatar
180 months ago
"19 percent of all sales dollars" of consumer electronics sales in the U.S. during the holiday quarter

Has any single company ever done this before? :eek::confused:
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Exhale Avatar
180 months ago
It would just seem odd to me to eliminate what could be the most popular device for playing video games from the video game player market because it also has another purpose.
Uh, like PCs? The PC game market still has greater revenues and profits than the entire console (portable and non-portable) market put together, despite nearly a decade of media claims that it is 'dead'.

I haven't exactly seen anyone purchase a iOS device for games. It fills a handy secondary function yes, but a handful of people using it for gaming certainly doesn't qualify it as a 'video game' device. Snake used to be popular as hell back in the 90s on old Nokia phones, and then all kinds of java games when installable apps became possible around 2000. But we didn't call it a gameboy competitor because of that.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)