July 20, 2006
Macs see growth spurt
Source: ZDNet
Written by Tom Krazit
With a wider range of systems available, consumers have been snapping Macs up, giving them a growth boost that outpaced the rest of the market.
Macintosh shipments were up 12 percent compared with last year, Apple Computer said Wednesday during its third-quarter earnings call. That’s in contrast to a shipment increase in the second quarter of only 4 percent year over year–something that Apple described as a “pause” in buying activity.
In announcing its switch to Intel’s processors months before systems became available, Apple set itself up for a little pain: Consumers hesitated to buy PowerPC-based systems, with new Macs on the way. But now that MacBook Pro and iMac systems have been available for several months, and because of the strong demand for MacBook systems released in mid-May, any signs of hesitation among home users appear to have been erased.
“I believe the key take-away is that the Mac business is starting to accelerate,” Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, said in an e-mail interview after Apple’s earnings announcement.