You’re so right. This article should have been just the last two paragraphs. They’re all that mattered.

Instead, we’re slicing the data six ways from Sunday to reach a 91% figure that’s meaningless anyway.

I opened this door, so it’s my bad.

The data is also just June, when as Apple said, the white MacBook was cannibalized by the new MacBook Pro. And there’s no way that white MacBooks and Mac minis total 23% of Macs sold; remember that Mac ASP is close to 1300 for the quarter.

Gartner estimated 1.4m Macs sold in the US in the quarter (not June). And 14.9m PCs (excluding Macs), For PCs, some large % are corporate and direct sales. Some % is online sales. Let’s say 4m are sold in retail stores in qtr. 14%, or very likely more, are netbooks (since netbooks sold via corporate and direct sales are probably negligible). Go from there…

The data does not include sales from sites like Dell.com and Apple.com(or corporate, or homebrews). This is guaranteed to skew things. It may be that consumers who buy expensive PCs use direct order, while those who purchase expensive macs run off to the store.

If you had a number that included all pcs sold, then that would be meaningful.

“WHO FREAKING CARES?”

Honestly, these cost debates are about as turd-filled as a Mac vs. PC argument between two die-hard users of each platform.

Thanks for the analysis, here is why I disagree:

- According to IDC, worldwide PC shipments for the last quarter were 68.15M. (This figure is not definitive, but close enough for our purpose.)
- We know from Apple’s earnings call they sold 2.6M Macs during the same quarter.

How may of the Macs were over $1K? Apple doesn’t say, but the white MacBook (very popular) and Mac minis are under that. Let’s say they accounted for 600,000 units, so 2M Macs were over $1K.

If that 2M represents 91% of the “over $1K” market, the total must be around 2.2M units. So, out of over 68M PCs sold only 200,000 were over $1K? No way I believe that.

This is why I think it’s about counting revenue over the $1K threshold, not the PCs themselves. Sure, of the 68M PC sold most were under (heck, well under) $1K, but I think a lot more than 200,000 crossed that threshold.

One other point: Just look at the Amazon computer sales ranking. You have to go pretty far down the list to find a PC over $1000.

If you make some assumptions about the division of the 16M PCs sold (Gartner est) in the qtr into corporate sales, online sales, and retail store sales, and if you assume the retailers include Apple Store, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, MicroCenter, Frys, Staples, etc., then doing the math, one can come to the conclusion that of those PCs sold costing more than $1000, 9 out of 10 are Macs.

I apologize for the tone of my criticism. I am used to quality articles coming from the Apple Blog, and I was puzzled to see the breakdown. I am sure that 99% of your pieces are brilliant but this is not one of them.

As a previous commenter added, “your math does not add up.” That’s my main objection. It’s not really subject to interpretation, either. As I’ve said, if someone buys a PC for $1,045, then the dollars spent on a PC costing $1,000 or more are $1,045, not $45. Tell me how that can be interpreted differently.

Tomorrow is another day. I look forward to many posts to come, each better than the other.

For example, what was Apple’s percentage in the mid- to late-90s? Macs have never been “cheap”, so while not 91 it’s safe to say the percentage was very high. Yet Apple was in a death spiral while the Microsoft/PC ecosystem was kicking ass.

One stat does not a business plan make.

I have no issue with criticism, and certainly get plenty of it here, but your post has me confused.

Not every post can absolve the reader of perhaps Googling something themselves, especially when it’s written on the good faith assumption that the interested reader will know what it is. I did write in good faith, so I’m sorry you didn’t know the particulars:

** NPD is a market research firm. They crop up a lot on tech blogs every quarter as they release their data. They’re no stranger to the Apple Blog, having been mentioned in two other posts of ours just this month.
** Joe Wilcox wrote eWeek’s “Microsoft Watch” and “Apple Watch” blogs until just a few months ago, and he posts elsewhere as well.
** As for me, I’ve been writing on TAB for 10 months.

Point being that a writer has to assume a certain knowledge. Not necessarily for the entire blog, but certainly by post. When discussing share and retail sales numbers NPD is commonplace, and I considered Wilcox to be as familiar as Paul Thurrott or Mary Jo Foley around here.

By all means, hammer me for my interpretation of the quote and the whole “91 percent” thing. It’s worth debating because, whether I interpret it right or wrong, I believe the statistic sounds cool but means little.

However, I disagree with the specific criticisms you brought to bear here.

I read the quote as drawing the line at $1K and looking at all the dollars above it. That’s still how I see it, though it is a bit ambiguous.

If I read it the way you two want to, then it’s right back to nine out of every 10 $1K+ PCs are Apple’s, which I think is refuted almost via empirical evidence.

I think what we DO agree on, however, is that the statistic either way is pretty meaningless. As I said, Microsoft and PC vendors have made tons of money with lower-cost machines than Apple. In the end it’s all about the bottom line.

Ultimately, that was my point. It isn’t 9 out of 10 PCs, but 9 out of 10 dollars over $1K, but even then it’s a statistic of little value.