Apple's government Mac sales surge 200%, enterprise grows 50%

Apple's Mac sales to enterprise and government customers in the June quarter saw tremendous growth, easily beating competing PC makers in the three-month span.

As noted by analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company Monday, Mac government sales grew 200.8 percent year over year in the June quarter, well beyond the 12.1 percent growth seen by the rest of the PC market.

In addition, the business market grew 49.8 percent during those three months, besting the market-wide 15.7 percent growth in enterprise sales. Apple's best business sales came with very large companies, where Mac shipments improved 103 percent. Large businesses also bought 98.3 percent more Macs than the previous year.

"Whether the June blip was a one-quarter phenomenon or something more enduring should be revealed in future quarters," Wolf wrote.

Home Mac sales were also up 31.4 percent, besting the industrywide 25.2 percent growth. Despite the growth in business sales, the home market remains Apple's most important, accounting for 61.4 percent of all Mac shipments in the June quarter.

Apple beat the market handily in every segment except for education, where the Mac's 14.7 percent year-over-year growth couldn't match the marketwide average of 21.7 percent.

In all, Mac sales grew 31.5 percent year-over-year, ahead of the 20.9 percent growth seen by the entire PC market over 2009.

Wolf also highlighted the fact that Apple's pricing discipline has helped it to maintain a dollar share of the home PC market that is twice its unit share. While Apple had just 4.7 percent of the home PC market in the June quarter, it took 9.7 percent of the market's dollar share.

The numbers are even more impressive, Wolf said, in the European home market, where unit share is just 7 percent, but dollar share is 15.4 percent. The Mac's unit (10 percent) and dollar (20 percent) share remain higher in the U.S., "but Europe is quickly catching up," he said.

Apple sold a record 3.47 million Macs in the June quarter, helping the company's profits rise more than 77 percent. Mac sales grew 33 percent year over year, contributing to $3.25 billion in profit.

Earlier this month, Wolf noted that Mac sales are on pace to hit 14 million in calendar 2010 — a number more than 50 percent higher than what he had previously forecast for the year. The analyst noted that Apple remains "a small fish in three very large ponds," reflecting on opportunities for growth with the Mac, iPhone and iPad.