Hard to believe HP isn't a bigger (if declining) stack.
I question the size of "other" and the erratic data on Asus ... you don't have to be a 24x7 geek to see Asus with a comprehensive product set and competitive, leading edge models and latest chip sets -- Asus all over every game in the house and Lenovo simply is not.
Acer has much sharper spikes than depicted in this stacked chart and spends money on marketing, trade shows, launches, blog presence because it has fad machines.
None of these spikes reflect the Ivy and Sandy demand spikes as much as you'd think from the coverage and demand, so I'm guessing the underlying numbers are adulterated in some way.
I don't put a lot of thought (or credence) into fundamentals, I'm not going to be renting a light aircraft to fly over the crop harvests or sending someone to inspect factories at Sharp to see how it impacts Apple, but I do think you can look at the last mile of retail and know what's real and what's imagined. Apple stores are a daily feeding frenzy of summer consumerism. They sell out of $600 4TB RAID Thunderbolt drives (and I check every time I'm there.) I see people gleefully striding out the front door with $2K of iMac and a humble Apple Sherpa carrying the accessories. Best Buy is a ghost town of tumbleweeds and someone buying a coffee maker because theirs broke and they don't want to wait till tomorrow for Amazon Prime to deliver.
I did note with interest that Apple has a "not a Mac" add which suggests they've detect inroads from the wave of Air and MBP look-a-likes, which I think are predominantly Asus and Acer.
AAPL has come back into nosebleed pricing. I look forward to shorting it and recovering some of my losses when I was slow to be running with the bulls in Q1. : ) 8/6/12
WaveWalker
