WSJ.com - Will Apple See a Boost?

WSJ.com - Will Apple See a Boost?: "The iPod's popularity has had a 'halo effect' on Apple's Mac business, which still represents the bulk of the company's sales. Apple sold more than a million Macs in its most recent quarter, or 43% more than in the same period the prior year. That growth rate was nearly quadruple that of the PC industry as a whole during the same time.
As a result, Apple has notched up minor gains in market share, rising to 2.3% of new PC sales world-wide during the first three months of this calendar year, from 2% the prior quarter, IDC estimates. But some longtime Apple watchers question how durable the trend is.
'We've seen this before,' says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School and a board member of Intel Corp., which makes the microprocessor chip found in most Microsoft-based PCs. 'Apple has some hot products, they outgrow the market for some time and those [periods] tend to be relatively short-lived.'
Apple faces the long-term problem that most corporate users -- outside of some design-oriented specialties -- have standardized on Windows PCs. In addition, its hardware, while attractive, has tended to be more expensive than Windows machines."