Apple vs. the PC Industry

26 Jul 2015 • daringfireball.net

To put Apple’s current industry position in perspective, the company probably sold somewhere between 60-65 million iOS devices last quarter. (I’m guessing ~50 million iPhones, ~10-12 million iPads, and a handful of million iPod Touches.) The average selling price of a PC has fallen to under $400. The average selling price of an iPhone has been estimated to be as high as $660. So while iOS devices, taken as a whole, might still fall a few million units short of the PC industry, they’re clearly generating more in revenue. More importantly, the PC industry operates on razor-thin margins; iOS devices sell with remarkably high margins.

Very insightful. We should probably be thinking of the market in broader terms like this more often instead of just PC vs Mac market share/growth discussions. Apple is building the computers of the future and making a lot of money doing so. PC makers are building the computers of the past, slaving away, and not getting much return for all that effort.