Apple's annual revenues plunged by

Apple's annual revenues plunged by 33% last year, and its unit sales fell by 32%, so that Apple's total number of units was lower than the increase in sales of Dell PCs. On the revenue side, Apple slumped from $7.98 billion in 2000 to $5.36 billion in 2001. Sales of Macs fell from 4.6 million to 3.1 million, including a 46% fall in sales in Japan. Apple sold 1,768,000 units in the US and 754,000 in Europe. Most sales were iMacs (1,208,000 down from 2,194,000), followed by Power Macs (937,000 including Cubes), iBooks (596,000) and PowerBooks (346,000). This would give Apple a market share of 2.4% if Gartner Dataquest's figures are correct: it puts the total market at 128 million units, including 16,996,000 Dell machines. (I'm sure the Apple figures are correct because they are the ones Apple has supplied to the US government's Securities and Exchange Commision in filing 10-K, here.) But there are consolations for Mac fans. It had amazingly good press coverage for a company that was performing so badly. Also, the failed Cube, the attempt to bolster collapsing iMac sales ("Maybe they'd sell if we did them in polkadots" smacked of desperation), and the five year struggle to ship OS X are things of the past. Things can only get better. But in the longer term, the contrast with Dell is most marked. Apple's revenues have fallen from $11.1 billion in 1995 to $5.4 billion in 2001, while at the same time, Dell Computer's have grown from $3.5 billion to $31.9 billion.