Filed under: Products and services, Competitive strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stepped up its market share in Q3, lifting its PC sales to almost 10% of all Computers sold, according to research firm Gartner, Inc. For Apple, this is great news — it’s steadily taking sales from bigger competitors Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) and global PC sales leader Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ). Its laptop Personal computers continue to sell like hotcakes, even with prices that are much higher than the discount prices you would normally see on Windows-based laptop PCs.
Even though Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week that the company won’t be getting into the “netbook” business (tiny notebook Personal computers with limited features), a Gartner research analyst said the company could be in trouble for not having a product to address this market. I think Apple is right here, though; just because there is a market doesn’t mean Apple needs to play in it. The laptop PC industry continues to try and find the next massive niche so that product segments like fully-functional laptop Computers won’t see decelerating growth. When there is a lack of demand, create it; that must be the PC industry’s rallying call.
With Apple releasing quarterly earnings in just over an hour from now, my prediction is that the current quarter’s results will reflect a company that’s timing its product releases, refreshes and entire product line transitions with great precision. It has shown that it can grow market share without being involved in trends that others create. Rather, it creates its own trends and gives birth to new industries as a result.
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