Someone a lot smarter than I am once told me that the best way to track trends in computer sales is to take a stroll down to the local university and check out what the computer science students and teachers are using. I balked at the comment at first, but after spending some time on campus I started to notice that they weren’t that far off the mark.
It makes sense in hindsight that Apple’s explosion in the tech sector was well on its way at the time. Everywhere I’d look, students were using Macs. It could easily have been the case that Apple products were easily identifiable and the competition melded together, but I couldn’t help notice that year after year there were more glowing Apple’s around campus. What started off as a hunch now has some numbers behind it. According to analysts–I know analysts are overrated–70% of incoming university freshman are showing up to class with Macs. We assume this is products from Apple’s laptop lineup considering they’re talking about in class numbers. Lugging a Mac Pro to class is a little bit overkill. Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research also goes on to say that the market share on campus is up ten to fifteen percent year over year for Apple and that Microsoft is have an extremely difficult time connecting with younger users. We don’t disagree with the sentiment, just the numbers.
We’re huge Mac nerds, but even I have a hard time with the 70% market share number. That’s insane. Anyone who spends a modicum of time on campus realizes it’s not really that high, but there’s definitely been an increase over the last decade. That being said other research shown in the Fortune article shows how Apple’s laptop lineup has surpassed Dell recently. Now that’s something I can get behind, and it’s a little more reasonable to me.
Are you a student? We’d love to hear your thoughts on these numbers. Have you noticed more Macs around campus? What do you think of these numbers?
Article Via Fortune
