Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company recently pointed out Apple’s success with Mac sales in the business sector in the U.S. during the September quarter. PC sales to U.S. businesses have been declining 13.3 percent year over year, while Apple had a 62.7 percent point difference. Mac sales to U.S. businesses grew by 49.4 percent year over year in the September quarter.
In total, Mac’s unit share of the U.S. business market was 9.3 percent in the September quarter, which is up from 5.9 percent of total sales in June and 5.4 percent in September 2011. On top of that, Apple had an even bigger share of revenue of PC sales to U.S. businesses, accounting for about 17.4 percent, which was up from 11.5 percent share in June and 10.7 percent share from the year before.
Wolf thinks Apple’s success is due to the company’s increased focus on adding features to OS X that makes Mac more compatible with Windows features. He thinks an important move was the introduction of Bootcamp in 2006 that runs Windows on Intel-based Mac hardware.
“For its part, Microsoft added features to exchange and its other network products that more effortlessly accommodated other operating systems, including Apple’s OS X operating system. These steps enabled the Mac to become a more responsible, if not first-class, citizen in Microsoft’s network environment,” Wolf said.
The biggest impact on business in the U.S., though, has been the “halo effect” of the iPhone and iPad, according to Wolf. As businesses continue to embrace iOS devices, he thinks they are likely to replace Macs in the workplace as well.
In a new quarterly record for the company, Apple sold a total of 4.9 million Macs in the September quarter. While Mac sales were up slightly year over year, the PC market continued to decline overall. Total PC sales worldwide were down 8 percent from 2011, making it 26 straight quarters that Mac sales outgrew PC shipments.
