HP rules Apple, others in January sales
updated 04:40 pm EDT, Tue March 13, 2007
HP rules Apple in sales
HP was by far the leading seller of computers at retail shops in the US, says Electronista, easily dominating companies such as Apple. Triggered in part by the launch of Windows Vista, HP took over 43 percent of all desktop sales in stores during the month, and also claimed the top spot for notebooks at over 23 percent. The company further managed to claim second place in the desktop arena, taking over 12 percent through sales of Compaq desktops. Emachines and Toshiba were the company's chief rivals in the desktop and portable spaces at almost 11 percent and 19 percent, respectively. As the only non-Windows competitor, Apple just edged its way into the top list with over 10 percent of all notebooks.
Notably however, it is also the only company in the top five (of either category) to operate its own stores. No information is yet available to determine whether or not these stores were included. Moreover, the results are not considered a definitive reflection of US marketshare: some companies, including Dell, sell most or all of their systems through direct orders, bypassing retail stores entirely. However, the results ultimately confirm HP reaping the greatest amount of extra sales from the Vista PC surge and its virtual monopoly of floor space.
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HP rules?
...and this is newsworthy on MacNN because? Of course someone would have to be the top seller of PCs when you're measuring PC sales. However no evidence is provided to support such a claim that Vista is the cause of the sales or marketshare. Clearly these reporters are not scientists. Again we see the everpresent logical fallacy of Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Latin for "after this, therefore because of this" The form of the post hoc fallacy can be expressed as follows: A occurred, then B occurred. Therefore, A caused B. Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection.