While demand for PCs is on the decline, Gartner estimates that Apple’s Mac shipments for the second quarter of 2017 remained almost the same in comparison to the second quarter of last year. HP and Dell saw growth in shipments, while Lenovo witnessed a drop.
Apple’s Mac shipments down, but market share up
In the second quarter of 2016, Apple shipped 4.26 million Macs worldwide, while this year, it shipped 4.24 million Macs, a decline of about 0.4%, estimates Gartner. However, Apple’s PC market share went up despite the decline in sales. Apple’s PC market share was 6.7% last year, but now, it has inched up to 6.9%. Refreshed hardware last month could have helped Apple’s sales.
With the increase in market share, Apple now holds the fourth position in the PC market after toppling Asus. HP and Dell, which witnessed growth in shipments, were the number one and three PC vendors, respectively. HP accounted for 20.8% of the market with 12.7 million PCs, while Dell accounted for 15.6% with 9.6 million PC shipments.
Gartner Principal Analyst Mikako Kitagawa, said, “Higher PC prices due to the impact of component shortages for DRAM, solid state drives (SSDs) and LCD panels had a pronounced negative impact on PC demand in the second quarter of 2017. The approach to higher component costs varied by vendor.”
Lenovo, which witnessed a drop in sales from 13.3 million last year to 12.2 million this year, lost the top spot to HP. Lenovo’s current market share stands at 19.9%. The fifth and sixth spots were held by Asus and Acer, both of which sell budget PCs and saw massive declines in sales. Asus accounted for 6.6% of the market with 4 million units, while Acer held s 6.3% share with 3.9 million units sold.
IDC numbers were somewhat better
Looking at PC sales in the United States, HP topped the market, followed by Dell and Lenovo. Apple acquired the fourth spot with a market share of 11.8%, down from 12.3% last year, according to Gartner.
IDC also released its PC shipment estimates on Wednesday, and the numbers were comparatively more positive than Gartner’s. According to IDC, Apple’s Mac shipments registered a small growth rate of 1.7% from the second quarter of last year. IDC also estimates that the total PC shipments for the quarter stood at 60.5 million units, a drop of 3.3%. Gartner’s data, on the other hand, showed a worldwide PC shipment decline of 4.3%. IDC’s rankings, however, are the same as Gartner, with the top five spots held by HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple and Asus, respectively.
“Despite recent issues wrought by component shortages and its effect on system prices, we expect the momentum of commercial market replacements will contribute to eventual market growt,” said IDC research manager Jay Chou.
It must be noted that the numbers from Gartner and IDC are only preliminary estimates, so there are good chances that the final number will change. For instance, for the second quarter of last year, Gartner initially estimated that Apple’s Mac shipments amounted to 4.56 million, but the actual number came out to be 4.26 million, notes MacRumors.
On Wednesday, Apple shares closed up 0.14% at $145.74. Year to date, the stock is up almost 26%, while in the last year, it is up almost 51%.
