Gartner predicts Macintosh marketshare doubling

I don't put much faith in Gartner Analysts, nor their long-term predictions – after all, they are just taking educated guesses. However, their predictions do show prevailing trends (fads?) in the IT industry which do affect buying patterns across the technology sector. In its Ten Predictions for 2008 and beyond Gartner said:

By 2011, Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in Computers. Apple's gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple's success. Apple is challenging its competitors with software integration that provides ease of use and flexibility; continuous and more frequent innovation in hardware and software; and an ecosystem that focuses on interoperability across multiple devices (such as iPod and iMac cross-selling).

This isn't actually hard to believe, when you consider that in three years almost every desktop and laptop in use now will be replaced. Apple could have a 50% marketshare. Or it could have 0%. Or the desktop market might not even exist. Who knows? Gartner's analysis could be as acurate as throwing darts at a board.

One thing that is certain is that Apple is slowly but surely gaining marketshare. As good as the Leopard OS is, most of this can be attributed to the cold reception that Vista is getting. Changewave did a survey recently on the satisfaction of new computer owners and their operating systems. Apple's Leopard was over 81% in the highest "Very Satisfied" category. Not bad, considering there were probably a lot of switchers in there that were coming over from Windows who hadn't become familiar with Macintosh yet. But that wasn't the most telling statistic.

Windows XP barely came in over 50% in the "Very Satisfied" category. Sadly for Microsoft, Vista came in far below even that. At 27% and 15% respectively for Home Premium and Home Basic, Vista is a calamity for Microsoft. From what I've seen of Vista SP1, it isn't addressing the major concerns of its users.

Yet, Vista is selling briskly - selling over 100 million copies so far.

So where will the market be in three years? I have no idea. But you know what Gartner thinks - which doesn't sound unreasonable given today's trends.