Subtle distinctions. . .

I skimmed the article earlier and missed this sentence in the very first paragraph of the article about NPD's Apple numbers:

"According to NPD, in June, nine out of 10 dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more went to Apple."

That's a very different statement than saying Apple has 91% of that market segment. This was pointed out to me by this article on The Apple Blog (not an Apple Inc. blog), which explained the difference with this example, where Apple can get that 91% by selling exactly as many computers as its competition:

Consider the example where two people go to a Best Buy. One buys a PC for $1,045, the other a Mac for $1,455. At this point the Mac and PC market share is equal (one each, 50 percent). But now let’s look at the “dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more”, which total $500. PC got $45 (9 percent), while Mac got $455 (91 percent).

A very subtle change in wording can have a dramatic difference in meaning. The example is flawed in that he treats selling price as though it was a graduated income tax were only dollars above $1000 counts as spent, which I don't think NPD was saying. But the point remains that Apple could sell the exact same number of machines (or even fewer) and still get a higher revenue share by selling more expensive machines.