Microsoft increased five percent in revenue with their licensing of Windows to third-party manufacturers. On the contrary, Apple's Mac falls down to the fifth spot when it comes to sales of premium devices.
The premium devices are those costing $900 and above. This market is traditionally dominated by Apple's MacBook or iMac, but third-party manufacturers of Windows-based PC earned significant increase in sales last year.
Taking the top spot is Lenovo, followed by HP, Dell, and ASUS consecutively. Apple ended on the fifth spot with only 7.1 percent of sales in the market. There are also reports that Samsung and Fujitsu will be selling their businesses to Lenovo.
Mac will be receiving its updates this year, after being neglected for a long time because of Apple's dedicated focus on their iPhone range. Last year, many consumers felt disappointed on the MacBook Pro release, while the iMac received too little attention in the market.
As for Microsoft, their decision to make licensing agreements with other manufacturers proved to be an effective strategy against Apple. For the past years, the Windows OS was catered by low and mid-range computers, thus trying to keep the gap close with Apple by quantity instead of price.
But starting 2015, Microsoft boldly introduced their Surface Book laptops which was made to pit against MacBook Pro. The start of Surface Book became a challenge, but with the Windows OS dominating the quantity in market, more and more Mac users switched to Windows-based devices. This strategy paid-off for Microsoft.
Microsoft even introduced their Surface Studio PC, a high-end device intended to compete against Apple iMac. Despite the expensive pricing of $2,999, Microsoft claims that it Surface Studio is doing great than their projected sales.
During the last holiday season, the MacBook Pro sales dropped while Surface PCs gained significant upper hand in the market. This may be due to consumer's disappointment over the lack of improvements on the MacBook Pro.
