I’ve been traveling a lot lately. I spend a lot of time in airports waiting for flights and in coffee shops meeting various people. One thing I always pay attention to is what kind of computer that people around me are working on. A bit geeky I suppose. Anyway, I don’t know if it is the kinds of places I frequent or if Apple is just having a very good year but I’m seeing A LOT of Mac laptops. Of the 13 people working around me in the San Francisco terminal the other day waiting for our Seattle flight, 9 of them were on Macs. Frankly, I was astounded. At the coffee shop the next morning there were exactly 8 people working on laptops. 5 of them were on Macs. As I sit here working in the new Top Pot Doughnuts on Queen Anne this morning, there are 4 people working on laptops. Two of them are Macs.
According to preliminary data from NPD, Apple reportedly achieved 14 percent of the U.S. retail PC market share in February 2008, up from 9% just a year ago. This represents 60 percent unit growth and 67 percent revenue growth year-over-year.
This data is probably accurate but my day to day observations suggest that many in tech circles are switching. Low and behold, Apple’s stock isn’t in that bad of shape given what’s happening to the economy. I’m buying a little bit more stock today and will continue adding to the position over time and as I see how the economy unfolds this year. All I know is that I can’t recall other MP3 players, mobile phones or computing equipment where people were as religious as they are about these products. With Apple pushing business features into the iPhone, releasing a 3G version soon and positioning itself strongly for the utopia that is video-on-demand then it seems a reasonable bet to assume that this stock will keep pushing higher.
People in the tech field are definitely warming up to the Apple/Mac brand. It’s been easier than ever before to convince my co-workers and friends to buy a Mac for personal use. Back in the early 2000s, it was still like preaching to deaf ears.
Did you happen to notice how many of those Apple laptops were running Windows? Obviously it’s harder to count OSes than hunks of hardware, but I see a whole lot of Macs that run windows these days where that wasn’t even possible a couple years ago.