Apple Inc (AAPL)

[roni]

Year of the Mac

June 22, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Apple Inc. got help from the update to its MacBook laptops to push its share of the laptop market up nearly two points in May, to 14.3%, a research firm said today.

"Whenever Apple gets a new product out, they get a nice bounce," said Stephen Baker, analyst with NPD Group Inc. According to NPD's data, the laptop "bounce" was 14% month-over-month.

The May boost put Apple's laptops in fourth place, behind Hewlett Packard Co., Toshiba Corp., and Gateway Inc., said Baker, and moved its combined laptop-desktop sales share from 11.6% in April to 13% last month. In retail-only, Apple showed a slightly smaller increase, from 9.6% to 10.8%.

"Everybody's notebook business grew last month, but Apple's grew a little faster than the market overall," Baker said, adding that the company's growth rate has been larger than the industry average for some time. Desktop sales, meanwhile, continued to stagnate, although there too, Apple has an advantage.

"Desktops sales are declining, but [Apple's] are declining a little less than others." Apple's desktop machines -- the all-in-one iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro -- accounted for 10.4% of all desktop sales in May, a small increase from April's 10.2%. ,p. Apple should get another boost starting next month, as back-to-school purchases begin, Baker said. "Apple will have a better bump at back-to-school in the July-August-September time frame. Everybody gets it the last couple of years, but Apple gets a little bit bigger one, since compared to the Windows guys, it's doing more notebooks."