Win-Lose-Draw: confusion
Another way of looking at it...In Q1 2000, Dell shipped 2.5M units, Apple shipped about 1.4M. By Q1 2005 Dell had more than tripled its volume, while Apple was shipping ~30% fewer.
I think you may be getting your quarters confused, but in any case, none of your assertions are true. Yes, Dell has substantially increased its unit shipments over the past five years, but they haven't tripled, much less more than tripled:
Dell shipped 3189K units in CY 1Q00 as estimated by IDC at the time -- NOT 2.5M units. At the same time, Apple did indeed ship more units in CY 1Q05 (1070K) than it did in CY 1Q00 (1043K). Apple has never shipped 1.4M units in a quarter ... the best it has ever done was in CY 4Q99 when it shipped 1377K.
Part of your confusion may be that Apple's 4Q99 calendar quarter was also Apple's 1Q00 fiscal quarter. Comparing Apple's first fiscal quarter in one year to its first calendar quarter in another year is not particularly valid, however, especially when they are not sequential.
By the way, even given this confusion over which quarter is which, Dell shipped 3360K units in CY 4Q99, which was also Apple's FY 1Q00, so Dell hasn't tripled its sales from that level, either.
That said, yes, Apple's sales are close to flat from five years ago, when its market share last peaked, while Dell's have more than doubled (unit shipments for the PC market as a whole have increased a hair more than 50%). Good on Dell for outperforming the rest of the market, year after year, even though Apple has been the PC market's best performer for several of the individual quarters over that same period, including the just-concluded quarter. The difference is that Apple faltered for several years during that time while Dell continued rolling up the gains. I suspect this may be the point you were trying to make, and it's a valid enough point, even though you got all of your supporting facts wrong. |
