It appears from your inaccurate numbers that aside from no threat from virus writers, Apple's number crunching potential/usefulness is also equally limited.
My "inaccurate" numbers have sources... more up-to-date than yours.
You're first three citations refer to 2nd Quarter 2005 reports... which ended in March.
The second set of three is even older referring to 4th Quarter 2004.
Let's try something a little more up-to-date... say October 11, 2005:
According to market research group, NPD, Apple's market share through August of this year was a bit higher than normal:
...Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for computers ... grew to 6.6% from 4.3% in the same period last year... And even without taking into account sales of the newly introduced iPod nano, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for digital-music players edged upward in recent months to 74%....Meanwhile, the company's line of Macintosh computers posted strong sales as well, with unit shipments up 5% sequentially and 48% from the fourth quarter a year earlier.
Arstechnica
Or let's look at another recent article that provides numbers:
TMO Reports - Apple's Mac Market Share Climbs to 4.3% in U.S.
by Bryan Chaffin, 6:25 PM EDT, October 17th, 2005Apple Computer's market share of the U.S. computer market climbed to 4.3% in the September quarter, according to market research firm IDC. That's an increase from 3.3% from the year-ago quarter. Apple was the number five vendor in the U.S. market, behind Dell, HP, Gateway, and Lenova (formerly IBM's PC division), and the company showed a steeper climb in U.S. unit sales, 44.6%, than any other company in IDC's report.
IDC broke Apple's U.S. unit sales at 737,000 units. By comparison, number one vendor Dell shipped some 5.638 million PCs in the US. Dell had 33.2% of the market, well ahead of perennial number two HP, which had 20.3% of the market.
Gateway, a company that worked hard to be allowed to license the Mac OS in the early 1990s, showed what IDC called the second consecutive quarter of significant recovery. In recent years, the company had been seen as being on hard times with declining fortunes. In the September quarter, Gateway was the number three U.S. vendor. The company posted a 35.2% growth in unit sales, second to Apple, and claimed some 6.4% market share.
... Worldwide, Apple saw a 48% increase in unit sales, but didn't crack the top five PC vendors (Dell, HP, Lenova, Acer, Siemens). IDC didn't specify Apple's worldwide market share, but extrapolating from Apple's own total Mac unit sales of 1.236 million Macs, a record quarter for the company, the company had some 2.3% global market share.
Such extrapolations are dangerous, at best, because IDC does not rely solely on corporate numbers, but uses its own formulas and research methods to determine units shipped. Using Apple's reported unit sales to determine market share based on IDC's global numbers is therefore an inexact science. Nonetheless, this rough and ready estimate shows Apple is holding its own in the global market.
Total worldwide unit sales increased by 17%, and IDC noted that this was despite increasing energy prices and interest rates. It was the low end of the market, a market Apple addressed earlier in 2005 with the inexpensive Mac mini, that drove overall growth. U.S. total shipments grew by 11%.
Unlike IDC, NPD discounts the total number of PCs sold to account for those that are shipped to be included in machinery where the PC is only peripheral to the function and are not "general purpose" computers... copiers, manufacturing control units, etc... that would not be used by individual users.
Then again this sentence may say it all "Much of Apple growth was spurred by help from sales of the iPod digital media device..."
None of these computer market share figures have anything to do with the iPod sales except that many iPod users are buying Macs.