When you combine Apple’s Mac and iPad salesin its just passed quarter it becomes crystal clear that the company has become the world’s biggest PC manufacturer, so why do analysts continue to ignore this fact while slamming the company for being over reliant on iPhone sales?

You can’t have it both ways

It makes no sense to me. After all, iPhone is the top-selling smartphone in most territories, but the company continues to see its achievements buried under spurious claims that big brand Android devices (smart or not so smart) outsell it. At the same time, the same set of analysts refuse to include iPad sales within their big picture PC sales trackers.

In both cases, it’s quite ridiculous:

• iPhones are not the same as dumb, low-grade Android devices that really only exist to sneak a few sales and pollute the planet once their non-environmentally friendly manufactures send the units they don’t sell to landfill. They simply shouldn’t be in the same category, but they are.
• Likewise, when it comes to PC sales: Why are Surface tablets included as PCs by analysts, while iPad sales are not? How does this make sense when 78 percent of enterprises planning a tablet purchase want to buy iPads, and when those Apple tablets are in use in their hundreds of thousands performing tasks we once used computers for?

It makes no sense

Smartphone sales should segment out high- and low-end devices for a more realistic (and useful) picture of the market.

Clients of the big analysis firms should be demanding such segmentation. Why? Because they are about to make enormous investments in new digital transformation technologies, and when they do they need accurate market information to help them most effectively use their limited development resources.

After all, if only ten people on the planet to every thousand iOS users have access to an alternative device capable of running an application an enterprise is about to base its whole business on, it would be better off investing its cash in the iOS app.

In the same way, enterprises deserve to know what the true scenario is when it comes to the PC replacement cycle. You see, if they don’t knock the data around they will still believe HP and other beige box shifters are the leading PC platforms – but that’s not true – and for many enterprise usage cases, an upgrade to an iPad will be more than enough. (Not to mention the TCO and myriad other advantages of an Apple shop).

Post truth?

The truth is Apple sells the world’s most popular range of advanced smartphones, the most popular range of enterprise-class tablets, and is the world’s biggest PC vendor (including Mac and iPad sales).

This truth doesn’t seem to make any difference to those people paid to give intelligent leadership to the enterprise community, who continue to insist that Apple is a bit part player in IT (which it isn’t), and that it’s overly-dependent on iPhone sales – even though it has massive growth in services, wearables and a leadership position in pretty much every sector it plays in. (Even Siri leads the industry as a smart assistant that doesn’t sell your privacy for profit).

In other words, Apple has multiple complementary businesses and holds a leadership position in almost every single one.

Where’s the money?

Someone, somewhere, profits from these flawed analyst and media visions – but the very existence of those fake takes serves to generate problems for business and consumer users alike, all of whom deserve to be given accurate information upon which to base their buying decisions.

Enterprise users deserve to know this when planning their next tech upgrade, and if they aren’t being told as much you need to ask yourself “Why?”.