Apple devices outsell all Windows PCs

Total unit sales of all Apple products surpassed unit sales of computers running Windows last quarter of 2013,  Andreesen Horowitz analyst Benedict Evans has revealed.

It comes as a historic moment for Apple, which in the first quarter of 2009 failed to come close to competing with Microsoft's sales, but thanks to the shrinking PC market and exploding sales of the iPhone and iPad, Apple managed to race ahead of Microsoft in the fourth quarter of 2013 (see table).

However standalone sales of Mac desktops and laptops still add up to only a fraction of the global market for PCs, if one compared the sales of all the computing devices (iPhones, iPads, etc), the number of computers sold by Apple exceeded the number of Windows-based PCs shipped worldwide, in Q4 2013.

But, if one included Windows Phone, Microsoft was still ahead - but only just so.

According to Evans, this was a very good illustration of the scale of mobile; even though Apple limited itself to only the high end of the mobile market, it still sold more units than the whole PC industry.

The comparison admittedly might seem completely off the wall to those not inclined towards analytics.

Comparisons of the type don't add up given the variety of device categories, but analytics wonks would proffer the  counter-argument that the tasks that used to be done on PCs were now being carried out on an ever-expanding variety of other devices, most of them mobile, and the trend was set to accelerate.

So the next question could be what share of the world's ''computers'' would Apple ship when it unveiled its (still rumoured) iWatch?

Evans, who used numbers from Apple, Gartner and Andreesen Horowitz, to compile a table (reproduced below) of sales of Apple and Windows products from 2009 till December 2013, said the two companies were close to parity on device sales when counting Windows Phone units, though Apple had overtaken devices that ran traditional Windows.

But device sales do not tell the whole story for either company and with Microsoft making many more products, like the Xbox One and Bing, and Apple on its part rakes in billions of dollars through the App Store. In terms of the companies' financials, there was no contest - Apple reported $57.6 billion in revenue last quarter, over twice the size of Microsoft's quarterly revenue of $24.52 billion.

It was however, unclear whether the sea change was permanent, though. Apple's sales traditionally run high in the fourth quarter of a calendar year when people look to pick up new iOS devices for the holidays, but slip after that.

According to commentators, it seemed Apple's growth, while modest, was not going away just yet, and with its massive lead over Microsoft in the mobile and tablet markets, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and company need to step up their game.

Compiled by Benedict Evans with figures sourced from Gartner, Apple and Andreesen Horowitz