Apple US retail sales leap past PC par

MacBook Air driving demand?

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

19th March 2008 10:40 GMT

Apple took 14 per cent of the US retail computer market last month - 25 per cent if you look at its share in terms of sales revenue - figures from market watcher NPD reveal.

This time last year, NPD's numbers show Apple's unit and revenue retail shares were nine per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. Apple shifted 55 per cent more desktops between February 2007 and February 2008, netting itself 68 per cent higher revenues. For notebooks, the growth rates were 64 per cent for units, 67 per cent for revenue.

Apple's MacBook Air: slim shape, big sales?

The US retail PC market as a whole grew nine per cent in the same period - five per cent in terms of sales revenue - though laptop unit sales were up 20 per cent, according to NPD's stats. Desktop shipments were down five per cent. Sales revenues for the two types rose by 11 per cent and declined two per cent, respectively.

So whatever you think of Apple's kit, mainstream buyers are clearly increasingly keen to try it out.

According to another analyst, Pacific Crest Securities' Andy Hargreaves, cited by AppleInsider, the MacBook Air was particularly popular in February, the month it went on sale. The Air attracted a raft of new buyers to the Apple platform, he said, not simply folk replacing an Apple laptop they already owned.

And not just consumers, either. While the Air might seem to appeal most directly to the kind of folk you see using laptops in Starbucks, Hargreaves claimed "a new set of corporate customers make up a meaningful portion of MacBook Air buyers".