iThink - 11:44 am on Jun 4, 2010 (gmt 0)

The cynic in me wonders how much of that 10 percent is just new machines sitting in shops and warehouses awaiting sale.

I used to work for a major PC maker. So have a good idea about their supply chain management.

Typical brick and mortar stores all over the world keep inventory for no more than 10 days. On an average 21 days is all it takes for a PC being assembled in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore or India and it reaching home/office of an end-user customer in any part of the world. Inventories do increase to around 30-35 days around peak season like Christmas in the USA/Europe. So you can bet that 100 million copies sold means around 90% or even more of them are already in use by customers.