Apple Insider
Our industry expert rounds up the biggest Apple corporate stories circulating this month
Apple is the PC market The latest PC market figures from Gartner and IDC are grim reading for everyone but Apple, confirming yet another quarter in which Mac market share has increased as the industry contracts. Mac sales rose 16.1% year-over-year in the June quarter even as the PC industry as a whole shrank 11.8%, according to IDC; Gartner claims US Mac sales dropped 2.5% against an industry decline of 5.8%, but this is attributable to slight differences of methodology between the two firms. Apple is fourth (Gartner) and third (IDC) biggest PC vendor in the US and number four worldwide, according to IDC. Apple consistently delivers better results than PC industry trends as it consolidates its position among the top five vendors.
What fragmentation? Apple Music (Apple’s new paid-for music streaming service currently available with a threemonth free trial – see page 18) has helped convince millions of iPhone users to upgrade to the recently released iOS 8.4. Within one week of the introduction of the latest software upgrade, 84% of iOS users were only on iOS 8, while new research from Mixpanel pegged iOS 8.4 adoption as already reaching 40% of the installed iOS user base. Mixpanel CEO Suhail Doshi said: “The pace at which adoption has occurred indicates Apple Music is definitely a key factor” in driving adoption. Apple’s iOS 9 is in public beta now and due in September. Office 2016 ships (almost) Microsoft has made the latest Office upgrade, Office 2016 for Mac, available to any Mac user with an Office 365 subscription (from £5.99 for the Home Edition). The updated suite includes redesigned, rewritten versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Each application features a Microsoft Metro style interface, a user interface that the company is attempting to deploy across every platform or device its software supports. There’s a range of new features including realtime group editing of Word documents and feedback during the beta process has been extremely positive. Microsoft says it will ship the standalone version of Office 2016 for Mac in September.