The Tame Apple Press did its best to put a bizarre spin on Microsoft's figures last week, claiming that Ballmer's boys were losing the operating system wars to OSX.
The headlines appeared after Gartner released statistics that suggested that Apple's growth in the Operating System market had beaten Microsoft's.
There was talk that at last Vole had been beaten by Jobs' Mob and if the growth continued we would all be using OSX on our desktops and servers. Of course the TAP would welcome our new fruity overlords, but they should have engaged brain before printing such rubbish.
It is true that Gartner figures for worldwide operating system market share does place Apple's growth above rival Microsoft's. However when you have a market share that is next to zero it is easy to get a boost. Linux's growth beat Microsoft between 2009 and 2010 as well and no one believes that the world is going to p, p, pick-up a penguin any time soon.
Gartner's bean counters add up their sums based on the total revenue generated by a company's operating systems for 2009 sales and 2010 sales.
Apple jumped from a total revenue figure of $449 million dollars to $520 million, or 15.8 percent growth. Redmond jumped from $21.9 billion dollars to $23.8 billion dollars – a growth of only around 8.8 percent.
To the TAP that is seen as a victory and a sign that Ballmer should hand over the keys to Redmond directly.
Even if you think that the "growth" figure is significant, if you look at the statistics for market share. Apple's market share rose from a flaccid 1.6 to a pretty pathetic 1.7 percent between 2009 and 2010, or a difference of one-tenth of a percent. Vole increased its market share from 77.9 percent to 78.6 percent.
Apple might have sold more desktops and laptops featuring its operating system between 2009 and 2010, but Microsoft actually gained more market share. So it looks like Apple followers will have many centuries to wait before the Volish Imperium implodes.
What Apple fanboys should be worried about is why the OSX market share was not greater when it included the iPhone, iPad figures. This would indicate that the booming numbers of phones are not compensating for the loss of revenue from dwindling Mac figures.
If you were to push this trend out, in the same way the TAP did, then you would say that in a few years Apple will not be on the desktop or the notebook and will be an entirely mobile toy maker.
It will have surrendered the ground to Microsoft.
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Please by all means, keep up the denial, keep saying sheep, keep calling them a fruit company, your only damaging your own credibility.
Real OS's have bash shell's buddy, everything else is a toy.
Speaking of toys, RIM's playbook is getting a facebook app before exchange support, while apple's tablet is getting gobbled up by school's hospitals and ad agencies.
Could you know less about the market you "cover"
tech journalism is bad because of dinosaurs like you
This "article" uses incorrect dollar and percentage figures that must have been pulled out of one of your orifices.
People, such as myself, who have read the real numbers know just how erroneous your figures are. You may be trying to pass this off to the uninformed (a.k.a. Microsoft fanbois), but just the fact that you find it necessary to write this fallacious "article", shows how desperate you are to reverse reality (at least in your own mind).
"After surpassing Microsoft's market capitalization and its quarterly revenues, Apple has now surpassed its quarterly profits. In the Apple quarter ending March 26, Steve Jobs and company stacked up profits of $5.99 billion, while Microsoft's most recent quarter managed (only) $5.23 billion.
Apple topped Microsoft's quarterly revenue total in October, and it did so again this time around. And then some. Jobsian revenues reached $24.67 billion [Not "$520 million", Nick!], as Microsoft revenues maxed out at $16.43 billion [Not $23.8 billion dollars, Nick!]. Apple's market cap first topped Microsoft's in June of last year."
And Nick's market share figures are just as wide of the mark as his revenue numbers.
Nick, doing research for your "article" would take just a little bit of effort (try Google, it works), but fabricating your own ridiculous numbers only proves you to be a fool and a liar.
You are obviously the one that hasn't "seen any figures".
You should do the same thing that Nick should have done, and used Google to get the correct information, before you commented and made yourself look foolish.
Being too lazy too seek out the facts is no excuse.
(Hint: enter "apple revenue vs. microsoft revenue 2011" in the Google search field)
With that assumption...
Nope.
According to Gartner, Apple's 1Q11 market share in the U.S. (WITHOUT the iPad... which did displace a lot of netbook and notebook sales) was 9.3%.
And that is based on units shipped. Since Apple's median prices and margins on it's Mac computers is much higher than those of other PC manufacturers, Apple's revenue share will be a much greater proportion.
So even if he wasn't including iPad sales, Nick is WAY off in his numbers!
You are obviously ignorant of the fact that those are published numbers, not made up (as Nick has done).
But what's the use trying to point out factual information to a fool ;-)
But prior to that you stated, "Apple jumped from a total revenue [total revenue generated by a company's operating systems for 2009 sales and 2010 sales] figure of $449 million dollars to $520 million, or 15.8 percent growth."
A $71M increase or 15.8% growth is dwindling? You might want to go back and edit one of these two sentences.
Yes, it's still pretty low, but it keeps increasing. Last quarter, it rose by 28%, while Windows sales were down by about 4%. this is worldwide.
Oh what a difference a year makes, Nick!
Seriously?
You don't realise that these devices run iOS, a DIFFERENT operating system to OSX.
Great journalism - I'm sure a job awaits you at "The Register."
Your future is bleak if you keep feeling the need to prop up your dubious purchases by slagging off those who point out that you have wasted your money.