Apple Has 91 Percent of Premium 'PC' Marketshare

Look at market share..

Where did they get these stats from? Because I think there may be some problems with them.
My guess is that they got the numbers from physical stores, and probably from larger chains. So while it is easy to get the mac data, they miss all the data from those of us who build our own premium machines.
This is also like saying; BMW has a greater Premium car marketshare than Toyota. Well duh, that is all they make. Look at the ASP of the macs for evidence of this.
So you end up with a situation where someone planning to spend >1000 on a machine is likely: 1) an enthusiast who builds their own, thus not in the sample; 2) not informed, thus wander around till they find a shop with nice service and shiny, futuristic looking computers in their price range; 3) a Mac fan.
So the data collection methodology is probably biased towards macs.

It reminds me of the stats Microsoft released regarding percentage sales of the 30 gig Zune out of the number of 30 gig music players sold... !!!

The fact is any sort of statistic like this is COMPLETE spin.

That 91% is practically EVERY SINGLE MAC sold (being that the AVERAGE selling price for Macs clocks in at around $1,400, and Mac laptops clocked in at $1,400). Whereas it represents hardly any Windows PCs sold (average $489, and either $520 or $569).

PCs over $1000 are generally boutique specialist computers representing the very smallest section of the computer market, and as previously mentioned most of these premium machines are constructed at home by enthusiasts...

What this highlights is how much more expensive Macs are than PC's, the headline figure of 91% is purely irrelevant and misleading.

I almost didn't comment on this 'report' because it is obviously designed to evoke this sort of response, and create some sort of flame war... Ho hum, if you want to present a fair and balanced report please enlighten us to what percentage of the sub $1000 market does Mac hold, and what percentage of the entire market is that exactly?

You're all missing the point, everyone knows Macs are expensive (I'm not sure I'd call them premium products), and no-one is contesting that PCs dominate the rest of the market. The only point being made here is those prepared to spend in the upper range, are going for Macs rather than PCs, why isn't that obvious to you?

The one valid point here is that a large number of those with high end PCs might well be building them themselves rather than buying off the shelf, it would be interesting to see what the statistics were when that was taken into consideration - although this wouldn't affect the statistics regarding laptops.

I agree with all the comments about how this is skewed data, however less with the sentiment. Premium PCs are generally gaming machines, scientific (mostly Linux) or rendering. These are normally custom built and so have probably not been included.

Macs are expensive but they ARE pretty and ARE cool and ARE easy to use. This means if you want something in your minimalist apartment for editing photos and emailing your yoga instructor they are the best thing to go for. Style over substance but if you dont want to play Crysis at 1920x1200, render a ray traced stream or analyse the particle distribution from the LHC then whats the problem.

Just dont be smug about having it or Ill overclock your azz.

I agree with the fact that a lot of PCs in the high end will be custom built. Also, I presume this doesn't include things like say, servers or supercomputers. Which, while do not affect the customer, certainly do prove the aptitude that Linux and Windows based machines and hardware have over Mac.

Anyway, I have three Windows machines in one house worth >$1000. Not a single Apple produce here.

This story also doesn't mention if the data is worldwide or US specific. I agree with the general gist is that if you're going to spend over $1000 you're probably going to do it in an Apple store. Not much of a story there to be honest because:
1) Most people decide if they want a Mac or a PC before they start thinking about price.
2) It's hard to spend more than $1000 on a store built PC
3) It's hard to spend less than $1000 on a Mac

In the end I don't see the relavence of the statements in this article, it basically says most Macs sold are Macs, well well done for pointing that out to us, you should get some kind of prize. (Maybe a pointy had with the letter D on it)

I think the spin is supposed to be that people are prepared to pay the Apple premium, but as I said with point one, those people have already decided to do so and price is probably of lesser concern to them.

As I've said before, if you have money to burn then Intel and Apple are well worth looking into, but if at any point you have to think about your budget then AMD and Windows just make way more sense.

bollocks... what a waste of time...

There is no spin here, people are railing against a neutral statistic by applying their own conclusions on it, rather than looking at it at face value. At no point in this article is it making any sort of statement over the popularity or merit of either PCs or Macs. This information might not be useful to individuals here, but it's very relevant if you're an OEM, software developer, operate a computer retail store, shareholder etc.

If you draw an arbitrary price line in the sand and analyse the percentage of sales than it HAS to be misleading, and to come up with a figure of 91% of sales when we all know the true figure is less than 10% it is obviously spin.

The article makes no mention of installed bases or number of users which would surely be more useful to software developers, retailers etc. It might be useful to shareholders, but only if you are not intelligent enough to see past the obvious manipulation of the figures.

if the percentage of mac users compared to pc users is very small (which it is), then the percentage of folks who build their own computers is very very small when compared to those who buy "off the shelf" kit. I think its a real shame that pc venders are unable to compete with apple in the greater than $1000 per machine market and wonder why this is the case. maybe its because pc are on average so cheap and therefore when you see a pc costing more than a $1000 it simply "appears" ridiculously expensive whereas nearly all macs are over $1000 so they don't look so bad when compared to their entire range..

i do wish there were more "premium" priced pcs to choose from in the market place (and i bet microsoft wish there were more too!!)