USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010904.0748 (On Screen): Statistics are wonderful. You can prove anything you want with statistics. Want to prove that you're beating your competitors? All you have to do is analyze every possible way that you can compare yourself to your competitor, and if you're ahead in any one of them then you feature it in your advertising. So now that Gartner has published its latest figures on computer sales in the education market, the spinning is going to begin: who's in the lead?

Dell is in the lead. It is currently outselling Apple in that market by 3:2.

Apple is in the lead. Its installed base in the market remains twice what Dell's installed base is.

You pays your money (to Gartner) and takes your choice. But if I were the two companies in question, I'd much rather be ahead in sales than in installed base. If the current state of affairs continues for the long term, Dell's installed base will catch up with Apple. Moreover, no company makes money off installed base; it's only benefit is to encourage repeat sales, which doesn't seem to be working sufficiently for Apple. So I have to say that this is good news for Dell. (discuss)