7 ms·

"Apple reigns supreme over the computing landscape" Yeah, no. Not really. Maybe in Silicon Valley developer circles.

eightysixfour 5y ago
I don't think he intended it to mean "general purpose computing" but "consumer computing," he mentioned iOS in the next line. If you include mobile devices, in the US at least, I can see the argument, although it still isn't a great one considering Android.
- dartharva 5y ago
  It doesn't "reign supreme" in consumer computing outside the US either. Rather, it's hilariously down - Apple has a mere ~2% market share in India (the largest smartphone market in the world after China).
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    Which is why I scoped it to the US.
- kyriakos 5y ago
  ios is not general purpose computing
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    That's literally what I said.
ChrisLTD 5y ago
He may be thinking from a profit perspective, but it's certainly not true if you're measuring active users.
aodin 5y ago
Globally, about 270 million personal computers (including laptops) [1] and 1.5 billion smartphones [2] are sold per year. Apple makes up about 17% of global smartphone market share [3] and 55% of US market share [4]. [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-11-gartner-says-worldwide-pc-shipments-grew-10-point-7-percent-in-the-fourth-quarter-of-2020-and-4-point-8-percent-for-the-year https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-1... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... [3] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share... [4] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
- spideymans 5y ago
  How can Apple "reign supreme" over the industry, to the point where they're facing significant anti-trust pressure, while also having negligible marketshare? Clearly there is more to this supremacy than raw marketshare.
  - ahartmetz 5y ago
    US marketshare and mindshare among the (US) people who decide such things. If all the relevant politicians and judges and their friends and families (presumably all wealthy) have iPhones...
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    55% market share in the US, and the app store has like 70% mobile revenue is enough for US antitrust action.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    >while also having negligible marketshare? As well as having 55% US marketshare as other posters have mentioned, they account for 42% of global smartphone profits despite only having 17% marketshare. https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/04/apples-iphone-was-the-leading-smartphone-in-q1-taking-35-of-us-sales-and-42-of-global-smartphone-profits.html https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/04/apples-...
contracertainty 5y ago
This is an incredibly silicon valley centered viewpoint. I'm sure the guy makes some good observations, but how can you take anyone seriously that starts with a comment like this? Apple is insignificant outside of the English speaking first world: North America, UK, Aus/NZ. I wish some of these people from those markets would get outside their bubble from time to time. There's a huge market out there that has never used nor wanted an iPhone or any other Apple product. Not that they are bad, they just aren't all that special.
- jurip 5y ago
  Thompson lives in Taiwan, I believe.
- trimbo 5y ago
  > Apple is insignificant outside of the English speaking first world Japan has a higher share of iOS than the US or UK. Also China is ~20% iOS. Sounds small until you realize that percentage equates to more iOS devices than the US.
  - kumarvvr 5y ago
    iOS is different from Mac right? There are a lot more phones than Macs in China I believe.
    - trimbo 5y ago
      Grandparent post was speaking about Apple generally: "There's a huge market out there that has never used nor wanted an iPhone or any other Apple product."
  - andix 5y ago
    Also Switzerland or Sweden have a lot of Apple users. All those countries have one thing in common: everything is very expensive there. So people have a lot of money and they can easily afford Apple products. In Argentina for example an iPhone is around 2500 USD (100% import tax), an average citizen needs to save for a year to afford an iPhone.
rob74 5y ago
Apple only reigns supreme over the niche it's carved out for itself, which has maybe grown a bit over the last years, but will still always be a minority (globally) if you compare it to Windows/Linux on desktop machines or Android on mobile. And that's ok for them, because they don't want to reduce their profit margins.
Agentlien 5y ago
I find this baffling. I'm in Sweden and I do see a Mac every now and then, especially among artists and designers. But most people I know use nothing but Windows and every place I've ever worked used Windows. The only place I've seen a lot of non-Windows machines is the university. They had a fairly even split between Windows and Linux.
- cgh 5y ago
  As the parent mentioned, Macs are extremely popular in the SV development scene. Even large, stodgy 70,000 person companies like Cisco consider them the standard.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    IBM, in a historic twist of fate, rolled out Macs to their entire fleet unless you opted out. They also said that using Mac, contrary to what you'd expect from the purchase price, saved them buckets of money.
    - dijit 5y ago
      I don't know why you wouldn't expect that. People (consumers) see the Mac prices and balk because they're comparing to the Acer Aspire they can buy at BestBuy on discount for $300. Businesses see the Mac prices (and, barring upgrades): they see that they're cost competitive with the contemporaries. Dell XPS, HP Elitebook, Lenovo Thinkpad Txx (or Carbon X1) are all in spitting distance and in some cases even more expensive than Macbooks. That's before you even talk support contracts or yearly licenses (the OEM license on the unit is rarely the one you'll use, usually you have a volume license and a KMS server which also costs a lot of money).
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Exactly. From a business' perspective (and according to IBM's own study so this isn't conjecture), Macs are significantly cheaper in the long term, and only slightly more expensive in the short term if even. Also, when it comes to management for a small or even medium sized business, look at Apple's approach to management: https://www.fleetsmith.com https://www.fleetsmith.com . Dead simple pricing, dead simple UI, and they provision your devices out of the box without any manual setup. You can just buy 50 MacBooks, Apple will automatically ship them set up to your employees for no charge, and you'll pay a several bucks a month per device for management. Now compare that to how you manage a Windows deployment. By comparison, it's unintelligible. You need to upgrade every device to Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise as part of a contract to join a domain, set up a domain server with Active Directory to have a user store, add connects to connect the Directory to the Domain which may or may not require a Windows Server, which may or may not require the arbitrary Windows Server CALs, and then you have to manually set up and wipe each device out of the box unless you managed to get a special deal with the OEM...
hughrr 5y ago
Apple reigns supreme with people who have higher purchasing power than others. That’s the niche they want to maintain, not total market share.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  Even that seems to be limited to, as another comment said, the English speaking first world. The reason why I don't have an Apple device is not that I can't afford one. I can easily afford their stuff, but I want a Linux computer and a phone that is cheap enough not to worry about. Plus, their smug, hyperbolic marketing is really off-putting.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    I value my time which is where Apple seems to win ie it eats the least of it. That trumps the absolute cost in my mind.
    - ahartmetz 5y ago
      If we're talking about phones, Android is very low maintenance as well. If we're talking about Real Computers, Linux is more rough around the edges, sure. But it has Freedom. And it's a fantastic system for software development.
      - hughrr 5y ago
        I can’t speak for android now but when I used it 4 years ago I actually suffered irrecoverable data loss due to buggy SD card handling and was constantly bugged by it every two minutes (Motorola handset) for various updates and issues. It did not respect my attention however hard I tried to configure it to. So it went. I can’t trust it. Not only that with Google’s business model I can’t rationally invest in it. Oh and the handset was abandoned after 12 months. My backup iPhone 5s got an update on 14th June at 7 years old. As for real computers, yes. The Mac I have is a nice terminal for Linux on a server but Linux on the desktop is not rough round the edges: it’s a nightmare for daily use.
lwn 5y ago
From what I observe in NL (EU) is: Mass market is moving away from home PC's to handheld devices, either iOS or Android (about 50/50) (for example my dad uses an iPhone and iPad, mom uses an Android phone and iPad) Lot's of students, devs/ start-ups are using or switching to a macbook.
- collaborative 5y ago
  I wonder if consumer desktops will be replaced by "phones" connected to a keyboard/mouse/screen at some point. It kind of would make sense. If you could run Windows11+Android apps on a new type of good phone this would be great imo. It would save lots of desk space too
klelatti 5y ago
I think "reigns supreme" is a judgment based on $ value rather than number. If I said ARM Cortex M cores dominate the microprocessor market you would rightly dispute that.

I don't think he intended it to mean "general purpose computing" but "consumer computing," he mentioned iOS in the next line. If you include mobile devices, in the US at least, I can see the argument, although it still isn't a great one considering Android.

dartharva 5y ago
It doesn't "reign supreme" in consumer computing outside the US either. Rather, it's hilariously down - Apple has a mere ~2% market share in India (the largest smartphone market in the world after China).
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Which is why I scoped it to the US.
kyriakos 5y ago
ios is not general purpose computing
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  That's literally what I said.

ChrisLTD 5y ago

He may be thinking from a profit perspective, but it's certainly not true if you're measuring active users.

aodin 5y ago

Globally, about 270 million personal computers (including laptops) [1] and 1.5 billion smartphones [2] are sold per year. Apple makes up about 17% of global smartphone market share [3] and 55% of US market share [4]. [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-11-gartner-says-worldwide-pc-shipments-grew-10-point-7-percent-in-the-fourth-quarter-of-2020-and-4-point-8-percent-for-the-year https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-1... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... [3] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share... [4] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

spideymans 5y ago
How can Apple "reign supreme" over the industry, to the point where they're facing significant anti-trust pressure, while also having negligible marketshare? Clearly there is more to this supremacy than raw marketshare.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  US marketshare and mindshare among the (US) people who decide such things. If all the relevant politicians and judges and their friends and families (presumably all wealthy) have iPhones...
- reader_mode 5y ago
  55% market share in the US, and the app store has like 70% mobile revenue is enough for US antitrust action.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >while also having negligible marketshare? As well as having 55% US marketshare as other posters have mentioned, they account for 42% of global smartphone profits despite only having 17% marketshare. https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/04/apples-iphone-was-the-leading-smartphone-in-q1-taking-35-of-us-sales-and-42-of-global-smartphone-profits.html https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/04/apples-...

contracertainty 5y ago

This is an incredibly silicon valley centered viewpoint. I'm sure the guy makes some good observations, but how can you take anyone seriously that starts with a comment like this? Apple is insignificant outside of the English speaking first world: North America, UK, Aus/NZ. I wish some of these people from those markets would get outside their bubble from time to time. There's a huge market out there that has never used nor wanted an iPhone or any other Apple product. Not that they are bad, they just aren't all that special.

jurip 5y ago
Thompson lives in Taiwan, I believe.
trimbo 5y ago
> Apple is insignificant outside of the English speaking first world Japan has a higher share of iOS than the US or UK. Also China is ~20% iOS. Sounds small until you realize that percentage equates to more iOS devices than the US.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  iOS is different from Mac right? There are a lot more phones than Macs in China I believe.
  - trimbo 5y ago
    Grandparent post was speaking about Apple generally: "There's a huge market out there that has never used nor wanted an iPhone or any other Apple product."
- andix 5y ago
  Also Switzerland or Sweden have a lot of Apple users. All those countries have one thing in common: everything is very expensive there. So people have a lot of money and they can easily afford Apple products. In Argentina for example an iPhone is around 2500 USD (100% import tax), an average citizen needs to save for a year to afford an iPhone.

rob74 5y ago

Apple only reigns supreme over the niche it's carved out for itself, which has maybe grown a bit over the last years, but will still always be a minority (globally) if you compare it to Windows/Linux on desktop machines or Android on mobile. And that's ok for them, because they don't want to reduce their profit margins.

Agentlien 5y ago

I find this baffling. I'm in Sweden and I do see a Mac every now and then, especially among artists and designers. But most people I know use nothing but Windows and every place I've ever worked used Windows. The only place I've seen a lot of non-Windows machines is the university. They had a fairly even split between Windows and Linux.

cgh 5y ago
As the parent mentioned, Macs are extremely popular in the SV development scene. Even large, stodgy 70,000 person companies like Cisco consider them the standard.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  IBM, in a historic twist of fate, rolled out Macs to their entire fleet unless you opted out. They also said that using Mac, contrary to what you'd expect from the purchase price, saved them buckets of money.
  - dijit 5y ago
    I don't know why you wouldn't expect that. People (consumers) see the Mac prices and balk because they're comparing to the Acer Aspire they can buy at BestBuy on discount for $300. Businesses see the Mac prices (and, barring upgrades): they see that they're cost competitive with the contemporaries. Dell XPS, HP Elitebook, Lenovo Thinkpad Txx (or Carbon X1) are all in spitting distance and in some cases even more expensive than Macbooks. That's before you even talk support contracts or yearly licenses (the OEM license on the unit is rarely the one you'll use, usually you have a volume license and a KMS server which also costs a lot of money).
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      Exactly. From a business' perspective (and according to IBM's own study so this isn't conjecture), Macs are significantly cheaper in the long term, and only slightly more expensive in the short term if even. Also, when it comes to management for a small or even medium sized business, look at Apple's approach to management: https://www.fleetsmith.com https://www.fleetsmith.com . Dead simple pricing, dead simple UI, and they provision your devices out of the box without any manual setup. You can just buy 50 MacBooks, Apple will automatically ship them set up to your employees for no charge, and you'll pay a several bucks a month per device for management. Now compare that to how you manage a Windows deployment. By comparison, it's unintelligible. You need to upgrade every device to Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise as part of a contract to join a domain, set up a domain server with Active Directory to have a user store, add connects to connect the Directory to the Domain which may or may not require a Windows Server, which may or may not require the arbitrary Windows Server CALs, and then you have to manually set up and wipe each device out of the box unless you managed to get a special deal with the OEM...

hughrr 5y ago

Apple reigns supreme with people who have higher purchasing power than others. That’s the niche they want to maintain, not total market share.

ahartmetz 5y ago
Even that seems to be limited to, as another comment said, the English speaking first world. The reason why I don't have an Apple device is not that I can't afford one. I can easily afford their stuff, but I want a Linux computer and a phone that is cheap enough not to worry about. Plus, their smug, hyperbolic marketing is really off-putting.
- hughrr 5y ago
  I value my time which is where Apple seems to win ie it eats the least of it. That trumps the absolute cost in my mind.
  - ahartmetz 5y ago
    If we're talking about phones, Android is very low maintenance as well. If we're talking about Real Computers, Linux is more rough around the edges, sure. But it has Freedom. And it's a fantastic system for software development.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      I can’t speak for android now but when I used it 4 years ago I actually suffered irrecoverable data loss due to buggy SD card handling and was constantly bugged by it every two minutes (Motorola handset) for various updates and issues. It did not respect my attention however hard I tried to configure it to. So it went. I can’t trust it. Not only that with Google’s business model I can’t rationally invest in it. Oh and the handset was abandoned after 12 months. My backup iPhone 5s got an update on 14th June at 7 years old. As for real computers, yes. The Mac I have is a nice terminal for Linux on a server but Linux on the desktop is not rough round the edges: it’s a nightmare for daily use.

lwn 5y ago

From what I observe in NL (EU) is: Mass market is moving away from home PC's to handheld devices, either iOS or Android (about 50/50) (for example my dad uses an iPhone and iPad, mom uses an Android phone and iPad) Lot's of students, devs/ start-ups are using or switching to a macbook.

collaborative 5y ago
I wonder if consumer desktops will be replaced by "phones" connected to a keyboard/mouse/screen at some point. It kind of would make sense. If you could run Windows11+Android apps on a new type of good phone this would be great imo. It would save lots of desk space too

klelatti 5y ago

I think "reigns supreme" is a judgment based on $ value rather than number. If I said ARM Cortex M cores dominate the microprocessor market you would rightly dispute that.