Apple - the numbers

Apple's growth for New Zealand, year on year, was 72.7%. Photo / Apple Inc

It's easy to ignite debate on these pages just by mentioning a number related to Apple - sales of iPhones, iPads, prevalence of iOS, mobile browsing from iPhones, sales of Macs - whatever. It doesn't seem to matter.

Once only a perceived slur of Microsoft could achieve this on Mac Planet - now if I write '10', I'll get several comments saying '4'.

I often think that people dispute the figures simply because they don't like them.

So what are they?

For New Zealand, I have mentioned before that Mac sales as a percentage of PC sales went over 11% in 2010. I got these figures from IDC's data.

International Data Corporation is a global provider of market intelligence, advisory services and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets.

It's far from a biased Mac fan site.

Over 1000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in around 110 countries. As it has done for over 46 years.

These IDC figures are pored over by all the manufacturers and are hotly debated; the results are based on shipping reports from vendors.

I need to point out that IDC's figures are available only to subscribers, and I am not a subscriber. But I received this data from one such subscriber.

I might also dare to point out that if you have an issue with these figures, take it up with IDC.

Also, Apple does not release specific reports to journalists like me - in fact, Apple recommends I consult IDC when I ask Apple about sales figures.

The IDC figures I looked at were for the second quarter of 2010 - the latest currently available.

They show that overall PC sales in NZ (including Macs) dropped to the lowest level over the last three years in the second quarter of 2009, but in the same quarter for 2010 they surpassed the sales of the first quarter of 2008 (about 187,700 units compared to about 176,000 units). So the PC part of the NZ economy, at least, rose a little through 2010.

Brand by brand, HP, Lenovo and Sony all fared relatively well as they were adept at supplying the market. Toshiba had difficulties supplying and this was reflected in sales, and previous performer ASUS restructured its channel, which impacted the local market.

Apple was not singled out as having a supply issue, but any NZ Apple Reseller I have talked to over the last year has said the same thing: that basically they 'could sell any Mac they could get hold of' with the implication they wished they could have got more.

According to IDC's figures, there were some particularly strong growths in 2010. HP's sales rose 46.1%, year on year. Toshiba, despite its supply issues, still grew 34.1%. Dell grew 37.3%, and Sony grew a very impressive 72.9%, although it still only attained 6.3% of the NZ market.

HP, with its solid growth, represented 36% of the NZ PC market overall. Acer 12.7, and Apple was pegged at 11.1%, a slight decline from the previous figures released by IDC (11.6%).

Apple's growth for New Zealand, year on year, was 72.7%.

In IDC's 'Top vendor temperature reading, 2Q10', IDC wrote "Warm: Apple had a strong quarter due to its promotions of its 13" MacBooks in Noel Leeming and Harvey Norman. IDC foresees the firm to have a slower 3Q10 as a result of seasonality."

Whatever 'seasonality' means. But Apple released newer MacBook Pros and the i7 iMac after that report quoted came out, which may have boosted sales.

HP got a 'Hot' rating by IDC, but IDC thought all vendors would have a 'softer" Q3 2010 - except Sony which IDC foresaw as promising strong sales growth.

It will be interesting to see what the NZ Christmas sales did.

The IDC report I am mentioning came out about the time that Apple's iPad appeared. But the "iPad is not included in IDC's definition of a PC given its processor and iPhone OS. It theoretically could hurt mininotebooks in 2011 given its focus on media consumption, although IDC has not factored this in yet given how hot consumer notebooks continue to be today [inQ2 2010]. IDC has slightly lowered its mini-notebook forecast slightly to more realistic levels."

So, I will stick with my Mac sales at over 11% for New Zealand, thank you very much. In 2005, Apple's figures for NZ were more like 4 or 5%, and the US at around 3%.

Apple sales in some other places are nowhere near as good as New Zealand, at least as a percentage. With our strong education demand, Apple adoption by graphics and AV professionals and the strength of our developing talent (FileMaker, and recently, iOS), NZ has always had a good quota of Apple fans.

Traditionally, Mac sales have always been good in Germany and Japan, with New Zealand trailing them, and Australia at an estimated 6%, which may also be the most current US figure.

Some countries may be under that. Overall, for the world, who really knows? I'd guess 5-6% as there must be large swathes of populations that can't even begin to afford Macs, yet which lap up cheap netbooks.

But for 2010, Apple had about as good a year as any business could wish for. Apple recorded US$65.2 billion in sales, an increase of 52 percent over the previous year. In fiscal 2010, Apple made $14 billion in profit, a 72% increase over fiscal 2009. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer quite rightly referred to it as "a monumental year for Apple," reported Macworld (Macworld is an Apple-centic site, in case you were wondering).

Macworld also reported that Apple sold 13.7 million Macs in fiscal 2010, by far the most ever sold by Apple in any single year. That was a 31% rise in Mac sales compared to the previous fiscal year.

In the 2010 fiscal year, Apple sold 40 million iPhones, a 93% jump over 2009. During September, Apple claims it passed the 125 million mark for cumulative iOS sales across the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Not all of Apple's product lines are growing. The iPod segment continues to shrink as other devices eat into its demesne. But it still represents over 70% of the US market, according to research firm NPD's figures.

For all of this success, Steve Jobs took his traditional annual salary of US$1 - I'm not sure how much taxes ate into this princely sum. But don't worry for his purse - Jobs owns a fair bit of stock and hey, he presumably gets free Apple stuff.

So it may upset you that Apple is in a pretty good position for further expansion. It traded at US$333 billion in the pre-market on January 4th as it continued a march to overtake Exxon as the largest company in the US in terms of market capitalisation.

That's scary, actually. If Apple's market cap was a sovereign economy, it would rank as the 31st largest in the world, above Denmark, Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel.

According to the site Macromon, if just the cash and investments on Apple's balance sheet were a sovereign economy, it would rank 73rd out of the 183 countries monitored by the IMF - except, unlike most of those, Apple has no 'sovereign' debt.

Note that New Zealand's Gross Domestic Product was recently valued at 125 billion dollars.

Apple could buy NZ for a playground.

Perhaps I could sell the lollypops? I know what shape they'd be.

Apple will reveal its first fiscal quarter results for 2011 on January 18, 2011 (at 2pm US Pacific Daylight Time).

As a further fillip to the growth of sales of Mac computers, Apple announced that over one million apps had been downloaded from the Mac App Store.

On just the first day.

The Mac App Store is still turning heads with bargains, by the way - for example, Apple Remote Desktop 3.4 on the MAS is $104.99. The previous version, Apple Remote Desktop 3.3 was over 400 Australian dollars on the online Apple Store.

So it's clearly a Happy New Year for Apple, I reckon.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com