The truth about iPhone 5's first-weekend sales

[Johnny Vinyl]

Surely this was a setup, but then again.......I know people that bought and are buying the iPhone "just because". I don't think this happens with other phones.

 

[audioguy]

If she represents the demographic of the typical Apple customer, Apple will not exist in another 5 years

I hope, for her sake, that she is not that ignorant. It was almost hard to watch.

 

[amirm]

It really must have been staged or else created by the android team

These are the comments from the author:

"Sam Roberts talked to Rachel, who was waiting on line for an iPhone 5 on 5th Avenue in Manhattan for no apparent reason. This woman is not a plant, she is a real person, and she is brilliant. For more see http://notsam.com or @notsam on twitter."

This being a commercial entity, FTC rules of full disclosure would probably apply so I doubt that it is fake. Have you watched reality shows lately? There are plenty of people like that on them .

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

While that is true, it really has not impacted the market in any major way. The combined shares of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 are higher than 80%. Mac OS shares are at 10% level.

What were those numbers 10 years ago?

Tim

 

[DaveyF]

What were those numbers 10 years ago?

Tim

Great point, Tim.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

It would also be telling to compare the numbers at home vs. enterprise installations. I'd guess that MS has lost a lot of market share on that front.

Tim

 

[amirm]

What were those numbers 10 years ago?

Tim

Probably in the 90% range. I found a graph for 2007:

Mac was around 7%. So if there is a mass exodus because people are fed up with Windows, it is not reflected in the growth of that to 10%.

To be sure, there is a threat in the consumer sector from tablets and I expect the share to decline more. If this was the point that was being made then it would have been cool . But not that everyone is jumping ship from Windows to Mac.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Not everyone, no. But if, as your charts indicate, I'd lost almost 3% of market share in my core product, in spite of a near-lock on the huge enterprise market, I sure wouldn't be happy. And I think that lock is getting a bit rusty. Here's a scene I've watched play three or four times in the year I've been with my current company:

IT guy -- Sure, anything can be done, but that'll take 100 man hours and $XX,000.

Internal customer: Really? I do that at home on a $49 piece of software.

I've also seen nearly every executive in this company from the Senior Director level up switch from Blackberrys to iPhones. A number of them carry iPads at work. Does MS worry that Apple will begin to seep into their core business from the ground up? By customer demand? They should.

Tim

 

[amirm]

Tim, you are changing the argument. No one said Microsoft is happy with its situation. Or that iPads are not used. Or someone doesn't bring a Mac product to work. Only that there is no mass exodus to Macs. Yes, the halo effect of Apple iOS products has caused growth in their Mac business. And there is no denying of the happy faithful Mac customers. None of these are the same argument as frequent updates have caused people to collectively dump Windows. I am typing this on my Windows notebook. It has fallen from 4 to 6 feet height out of my shoulder bag *three times* on concrete floor. Courtesy of its carbon fiber case and sturdy manufacturing, it is fully functional, sans a broken power button and nicked corners. I easily upgraded it to SSD. My co-worker wants to do that with his Mac but is terrified of opening it due to the complex manufacturing of Mac laptops where the battery is spread around the case and such. He is going to take it to Apple store and have them to do it for something like $400 -- double the cost of DIY solution on a PC.

The message being that Windows machines are pretty competent devices for general computing. They do not have gaping holes being filled by Apple. This is not phone business where we used to have computing devices that were a couple of decades behind the PC world and Apple (and Google) masterfully exploited that.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Would love to see an updated graph that included the Andriod OS.

 

[amirm]

Here is a snapshot from another source that shows Android:

This one shows the share of Windows at around 85% which is probably a more correct number. The other number came from some other site which I think is measuring usage on the Internet. Not quite sure and too lazy to find out .

 

[audioguy]

I'm amazed that XP still has such a huge percentage since two major releases-updates have come (Vista and Windows 7).

 

[ack]

I'm amazed that XP still has such a huge percentage since two major releases-updates have come (Vista and Windows 7).

Don't be - that's why end-of-life-ing it has been pushed back so many times. I still have 3 XP systems and a single Windows 7 as of only last April. It's one fine OS. The surprise to me is Vista, which isn't dead yet.