14 DAY TRIAL // With Apple's delay of Leopard, and Microsoft's Vista already out, there has been talk of Apple losing its touch, and ignoring its computer business, as well as much speculation on how Vista is having such a big impact on the operating system scene. All in all, considering the amount of talk about pent up demand and people holding off purchase until Vista came, you would expect to see a surge in sales. Furthermore, if Apple's offerings are indeed surpassed by Vista, you would expect to see a decline in Mac sales, especially considering the Leopard delay and the putting off of purchases that go with it. However, Robin Bloor looked at the numbers for IT-Director, and paints quite a different picture.
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, announced that Microsoft sold 20 million licenses of Vista in its first month of availability. However, looking at Gartner's recently released figures for sales in the PC market in the first quarter you discover that sales for the whole quarter amounted to a little over 62.7 million. That's just over 20 million per month and adds up to an 8.9% year-on-year growth, which would look like that pent up demand that everyone was talking about. Of all computer sales, only 14,811,000 PCs were shipped in the US, which would equate to only a meager 2.9% growth in PC sales in the first quarter? Not so much pent up demand for Vista here. However, looking even further, of that 2.9% growth, 1.15% of it is directly attributable to Apple. Mac sales grew by 30% this quarter, as they have every quarter after quarter for quite a while now.
All in all, the numbers indicate that Vista had a minimal impact in terms of driving sales, while Macs have been going strong, through and through. Furthermore, moves by manufacturers such as Dell who have started to offer XP again show that customers are aware of vista's capabilities and prefer the older version. Meanwhile, if Apple customers really are putting off purchase of new Macs until Leopard comes out, the fact that they enjoyed the continued year over year growth speaks of an even larger demand.