IDC pours water on reports of stellar Apple growth

IDC has played down reports of Apple's growth within the government and enterprise sectors, following articles trumpeting a major growth in shipments.

On Monday, Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Company, issued a note to clients around IDC's figures for the second quarter of the worldwide computer market, zoning in on the apparent major growth by Apple products in the enterprise space.

Data from IDC showed that Mac shipments grew 49.8 percent in business, 31.4 percent in the home and 200 percent in government in the second quarter of 2010, all significantly beating the market growth figures of 15.7, 25.2 and 12.1 percent, respectively.

But the headline figure of 200 percent year-on-year growth within government is not quite so astounding when you look under the bonnet. Eszter Morvay, IDC's research manager for EMEA personal computing, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that two factors conspired to inflate the number: a tiny shipped base in the second quarter of 2009 (9502 units) and that 2009 was a bad year to start with, as shipments were down 67 percent on the previous year.

If 2009's shipments were 33 percent the size of the previous year (100 minus 67) then a 200 percent increase brings the shipped amount, as a percentage of 2008's level, to 99 percent. When this is taken into account, there is little appreciable increase over the two year period.

"Clearly, this is purely coming from a more favourable year-on-year comparison," Ms Morvay told ZDNet UK.

Regarding the enterprise statistics, the story is the same: "Whether we look at the large or the very large business space, Apple's market share is practically non-existent, so it's not hard to show growth".

Finally, the figures "refer to desktops and portables (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, Macbook, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air) — no mobile devices are included here and iPad is also excluded," said Ms Morvay.