Are Desktops dead?

Supposedly, if you believe the popular press and blogs, Desktop PCs are dead, and the future is laptops, and to an even greater extent, smartphones. Well, I was pleased to see this on the online Apple Store the other day:

While this graphic only represents the top sellers from Apple's online store (and thus doesn't include all of the different ways that Macs are sold), I see no reason to think that it isn't reasonably indicitaive of Apple's overall sales mix. According to page 30 Apple's last Q309 Form 10-Q (PDF), Apple did over $1.1 billion in sales of Desktops (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, and Xserve) and $2.2 billion in sales of laptops (MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air). However, Apple only reveals revenue, not actual unit sales. And while the popular interpretation of the revenue numbers is that the MacBook is Apple's #1 seller, it seems like the reality is that while sales of the MacBook and MacBook Pro combined easily make Apple's desktops look bad, the iMac is a clearly a strong seller, and isn't being helped out by the Mac Pros and Xserves of the world.

So, I would say that this bodes well for an iMac redesign, and hopefully this means that Apple won't be severing it's desktop machines any time soon.

-Andy.

P.S. I was totally right about the Air. Take that, Chris!