Stop the Noiz

Toshiba Passes Apple in Unit Sales, Not Profits

Frank Fox - 2010.01.15 - Tip Jar

Poor, poor, Apple. It only had 31% growth year-over-year for last quarter and slipped to 5th place in the US market, as reported by IDC.

Compare that to Toshiba, which had a whopping 71% growth to pass Apple and take the #4 spot.

Apple was totally creamed by the growth of Windows PCs.

That's what the numbers say - until you dig into what the actual profit difference is for these two companies.

Toshiba is reported to have made some of these gains by selling low cost netbooks for around $350 each. There were undoubtedly some more expensive notebooks adding to the total. However, the bulk of the growth came from computers that sold for around $400. (This is not an exact number, since Toshiba hasn't released that information.)

Apple doesn't have any $350 netbooks to inflate its sales. Instead, Apple sold $1,000 MacBooks, $600 Mac minis, and $2,400 Mac Pros. I'm going to be real conservative and estimate the average Mac sold for only $1,000.

Let's look at how many units each company sold last quarter based on the numbers from IDC.

4th Qtr '09 4th Qtr '08 Sales Increase
Toshiba
1,720,000 1,003,000 717,000
Apple
1,523,000 1,163,000 360,000

It looks like Toshiba sold twice the number of computers. Way to go, Toshiba.

But what were the profits for each company?

Sales Profits
Toshiba: $400, 20% margin $286,800,000 $57,360,000
Apple: $,1000, 33% margin $360,000,000 $118,800,000

Sorry Toshiba, but those crap netbooks you sold weren't worth a whole lot of profit. I guess Apple's strategy of selling the better computer at a higher price is paying off.

In addition to making more money without trying hard, Apple has a netbook killer, the iPhone/iTouch combo.

If we could just get IDC to include the iPhone and iTouch to Apple's unit sales numbers, we'd really see how Apple is doing against its peers. Units and profits would equal what the whole computer industry sells in netbooks. The growth would be off the charts. LEM

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Google+, or subscribe to our RSS news feed

Today's Links

Recent Content

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter
Join Low End Mac on Facebook

Page not found | Low End Mac

Well this is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help.

Most Used Categories

Archives

Try looking in the monthly archives. :)

Page not found | Low End Mac

Well this is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help.

Most Used Categories

Archives

Try looking in the monthly archives. :)

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
Cult of Mac
Shrine of Apple
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
The Vintage Mac Museum
Deal Brothers
DealMac
Mac2Sell
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End Mac FAQ

Affiliates

Amazon.com
The iTunes Store
PC Connection Express
Macgo Blu-ray Player
Parallels Desktop for Mac
eBay

Low End Mac's Amazon.com store

Advertise

Well this is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help.

Most Used Categories

Archives

Try looking in the monthly archives. :)

at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link