The long decline of the Mac desktop?

The trend continues whereby Mac desktop sales are no longer growing.

In the 3 months ended 30 June 2012, Mac desktops were down 13% (units)
over the prior year, same period. (For the 9 months ending the same
day, Mac desktop sales were up 9%)

Laptops were up 8% however showing that the power of laptops have now
made them the first choice of people getting their first Mac or updating
their system. Portables are up 13% over the 9 month period.

Macs accounted for $4.933B in sales in the quarter - a 3% drop from last
year's quarter.

And that accounts for 14% of Apple's business in the quarter down from
nearly 18% a year ago.

Further, at this time last year, Mac's were a $20B+/year business and
now it is on trend to be less than $20B / year. Apple explain this away
as 'general weakness in the market'. The next quarters will tell.

Nearly $20B is nothing to sniff at to be sure but it appears that the
Mac Summer is cooling.

(For comparison, hp's 6 months ending April was $18.325B or
$9.162B/quarter for notebooks, desktops and workstations).

Of course other segments (iphone and ipad) continue their spectacular
growth (while iPod continues to plunge). iPad unit sales were up 84%
for the quarter and 108% for the 9 months. iPhone 28 and 78%
respectively while iPod has slowed 10 and 17% resp.

--
"C'mon boys, you're not laying pipe!".
-John Keating.

On 2012-08-18 15:32:29 +0000, China Blue [Tor], Meersburg said:

> My first computer were not a desktop but a roomful: a CDC 6400 which I shared
> with a bunch of other people, sitting at the console with O26 and DIS in the
> middle of the night. Now I use a MacBook Pro. If I could do software
> development
> and everything else I do on an iPod, I would. And in a few years I likely will.

The CDC 6400 was the third computer I worked with, being preceded by a
Bendis G20 and an ANFSQ-7. I was a member of the CDC group iin Palo
Alto and which were mplementing a COBOL compiler for the CDC 6400.

--
James Leo Ryan - Austin, Texas

On 2012-08-18 11:32 , China Blue [Tor], Meersburg wrote:
> In article <>,
> Alan Browne <> wrote:
>
>> The trend continues whereby Mac desktop sales are no longer growing.
>
> My first computer were not a desktop but a roomful: a CDC 6400 which I shared
> with a bunch of other people, sitting at the console with O26 and DIS in the
> middle of the night. Now I use a MacBook Pro. If I could do software development
> and everything else I do on an iPod, I would. And in a few years I likely will.

That would be nice. I'd like a nice simple IDE without a monster
framework to write Pascal, C and assembler and maybe Ada. Stuff I used
to do on a VAX and hp mini.

However for photography large screens are preferable to small so that
detail can be seen and there is ample room for all the toolbars and
palettes and such. I guess it's the same for video, engineering (CAE,
simulations, monitoring, etc), medicine (although that's beginning to
have a huge iPad footprint as well for its portability).

The iPad size is not an endpoint.

--
"C'mon boys, you're not laying pipe!".
-John Keating.

In article <>,
TaliesinSoft <> wrote:

> On 2012-08-18 15:32:29 +0000, China Blue [Tor], Meersburg said:
>
> > My first computer were not a desktop but a roomful: a CDC 6400 which I
> > shared
> > with a bunch of other people, sitting at the console with O26 and DIS in
> > the
> > middle of the night. Now I use a MacBook Pro. If I could do software
> > development
> > and everything else I do on an iPod, I would. And in a few years I likely
> > will.
>
> The CDC 6400 was the third computer I worked with, being preceded by a
> Bendis G20 and an ANFSQ-7. I was a member of the CDC group iin Palo
> Alto and which were mplementing a COBOL compiler for the CDC 6400.

Third for me, being preceded by an Elliott 803B and an IBM 7094. Then I
went to CERN where your job might be run on a 6400 or a 6600.

--
Tim

"That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" -- Bill of Rights 1689

Alan Browne wrote:
> The trend continues whereby Mac desktop sales are no longer growing.


In the case of Apple, sales have declined because apple added Autosave
and removed SaveAs in Lion.

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Sad. I still prefer desktops over portable devices for their speeds,
powers, customizations (limited with Macs though), etc.


On 8/18/2012 8:16 AM PT, Alan Browne typed:

>
> The trend continues whereby Mac desktop sales are no longer growing.
>
> In the 3 months ended 30 June 2012, Mac desktops were down 13% (units)
> over the prior year, same period. (For the 9 months ending the same
> day, Mac desktop sales were up 9%)
>
> Laptops were up 8% however showing that the power of laptops have now
> made them the first choice of people getting their first Mac or updating
> their system. Portables are up 13% over the 9 month period.
>
> Macs accounted for $4.933B in sales in the quarter - a 3% drop from last
> year's quarter.
>
> And that accounts for 14% of Apple's business in the quarter down from
> nearly 18% a year ago.
>
> Further, at this time last year, Mac's were a $20B+/year business and
> now it is on trend to be less than $20B / year. Apple explain this away
> as 'general weakness in the market'. The next quarters will tell.
>
> Nearly $20B is nothing to sniff at to be sure but it appears that the
> Mac Summer is cooling.
>
> (For comparison, hp's 6 months ending April was $18.325B or
> $9.162B/quarter for notebooks, desktops and workstations).
>
> Of course other segments (iphone and ipad) continue their spectacular
> growth (while iPod continues to plunge). iPad unit sales were up 84%
> for the quarter and 108% for the 9 months. iPhone 28 and 78%
> respectively while iPod has slowed 10 and 17% resp.
--
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In article <> ,
Ant <> wrote:

> Sad. I still prefer desktops over portable devices for their speeds,
> powers, customizations (limited with Macs though), etc.

one reason, maybe the major reason, for the decline in desktop Mac sales in
the third quarter was that in 2011, a new iMac was released in early May,
about 1/3 into the quarter, but in 2012, many people (such as myself) were
holding off on buying a new iMac in the third quarter until the 2012 models
were released.

I prefer a desktop to portable Macintosh for essentially the same reasons
you do; there's more for the money in exchange for a lack of portability
(which is a lack that doesn't bother me at all).

--
Tea Party Patriots is to Patriotism as
People's Democratic Republic is to Democracy.

One aspect: People tend to keep desktops longer since they don't get
droppped, stolen and they batteries don't expire after a few years.

So once you have a dekstop with sufficient power, you don't needto
upgrade it as often. If you have enough CPU to run 1080P h.264 videos,
and those videos are still the current tech, then your CPU is still able
to do what you need it to do.

It is perhaps wrong to declare the end of the desktop simply by noticing
sales are dropping. It may simply mean that people are not replacing
their existing ones as often but still using their desktops plenty.

On 2012-08-18 13:24 , JF Mezei wrote:
> Alan Browne wrote:
>> The trend continues whereby Mac desktop sales are no longer growing.
>
>
> In the case of Apple, sales have declined because apple added Autosave
> and removed SaveAs in Lion.

I knew you would write something like that as I wrote the post though I
thought you'd be a little less specific.


--
"C'mon boys, you're not laying pipe!".
-John Keating.

On 2012-08-18 14:00 , Ant wrote:
> Sad. I still prefer desktops over portable devices for their speeds,
> powers, customizations (limited with Macs though), etc.

Well the du/dt is pretty small but consistent with the slowdown for Mac
desktops over the past couple quarters.

1. Mac desktops are really good machines. There's no urgency to
upgrade. Mine is 4.5 years old and serves me very well and is keeping
my "new Mac" lust pretty low. That will end one day. For example a
hex|oct-core i7 at 3 GHz with 1666 or 2000 MHz memory would be more than
I could resist... ;-)

2. Apple identified "general weakness in the market" as a reason (didn't
slow the laptops as much though) and also noted that they haven't done
any major upgrades to the line in a while. Could be that people are
holding off for a really big improvement. (Above).

The Mac Pro got hardly more than a makeover in its most recent version -
though Apple seem to imply that an updated Mac Pro (really updates) is
in the pipe.

3. It's still a $20B/yr business. Magnificent in its own right.

Don't top post.


>
>
> On 8/18/2012 8:16 AM PT, Alan Browne typed:
>
>>
>> The trend continues whereby Mac desktop sales are no longer growing.
>>
>> In the 3 months ended 30 June 2012, Mac desktops were down 13% (units)
>> over the prior year, same period. (For the 9 months ending the same
>> day, Mac desktop sales were up 9%)
>>
>> Laptops were up 8% however showing that the power of laptops have now
>> made them the first choice of people getting their first Mac or updating
>> their system. Portables are up 13% over the 9 month period.
>>
>> Macs accounted for $4.933B in sales in the quarter - a 3% drop from last
>> year's quarter.
>>
>> And that accounts for 14% of Apple's business in the quarter down from
>> nearly 18% a year ago.
>>
>> Further, at this time last year, Mac's were a $20B+/year business and
>> now it is on trend to be less than $20B / year. Apple explain this away
>> as 'general weakness in the market'. The next quarters will tell.
>>
>> Nearly $20B is nothing to sniff at to be sure but it appears that the
>> Mac Summer is cooling.
>>
>> (For comparison, hp's 6 months ending April was $18.325B or
>> $9.162B/quarter for notebooks, desktops and workstations).
>>
>> Of course other segments (iphone and ipad) continue their spectacular
>> growth (while iPod continues to plunge). iPad unit sales were up 84%
>> for the quarter and 108% for the 9 months. iPhone 28 and 78%
>> respectively while iPod has slowed 10 and 17% resp.


--
"C'mon boys, you're not laying pipe!".
-John Keating.