Apple PC shipments reach new high of 13.6% despite contracting global market

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Estimates released Wednesday from market research firms show overall U.S. PC shipments fell nearly 14 percent year-to-year in the third quarter of 2012, while Apple's share shrunk 6.1 percent over the same period.

The preliminary U.S. estimates from Gartner saw Apple, which shipped more than 2 million units to garner 13.6 percent of the market in the third quarter, remain firmly in third place behind HP and Dell, though both leaders saw double-digit contractions of 19.3 percent and 15.9 percent, respectively. Market leader HP shipped over 4.1 million PCs in the September quarter to capture 27 percent of the U.S. market, while Dell managed over 3.2 million units to end with a 21.4 percent share.

Directly behind Apple was Lenovo, the only top-five company to exhibit growth in the U.S. market, shipping some 1.35 million units to end the period with an 8.9 percent share of the market, up 6.1 percent from the year-ago period. The Chinese computer maker clawed its way past Acer and Toshiba, which saw negative growth of 28.2 percent and 33.4 percent, respectively. Only 125 units separated the two last-place companies, with Acer shipping 989,725 PCs in the U.S. compared to Toshiba's 989,600.

For the second straight quarter, Toshiba posted the greatest decline, slipping into last place among the top-six.

"The third quarter has historically been driven by back-to-school sales, but U.S. PC shipments did not increase, not even sequentially, from the second quarter of 2012. Channels were conservative in placing orders," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "Professional PC shipments in the U.S. began slowing in the second quarter of this year, and they continued the trend in the third quarter. The results indicate that the replacement peak may have passed in the professional sector."

Gartner U.S.
Source: Gartner


The global PC market saw Lenovo take the number one spot for the first time ever, with the company shipping over 13.7 million units to capture 15.7 percent of the market, a 9.8 percent bump from the same time last year. Aggressive pricing catering to the professional sector is attributed to the company's surge.

While Lenovo enjoyed substantial growth in the third quarter, the overall PC segment was hit with an precipitous drop in shipments due to the imminent launch of Microsoft's Windows 8. Overall, global PC shipments dropped 8.3 percent year-to-year, with shipments barely creeping over 87.5 million units.

"Retailers were conservative in placing orders as they responded to weak back-to-school sales. By the end of September, retailers were focused on clearing out inventory in advance of the Windows 8 launch later this month," Kitagawa said. "On the professional side, there was minimum impact from Windows 8 in the quarter because the professional market will not adopt Windows 8 PCs immediately after the release."

Former global leader HP was hit with a steep 16.4 percent slowdown, bringing its share of the market down to 15.5 percent on 13.5 million units shipments.

Following HP was Dell with over 9.2 million units shipped to end the quarter with a 10.5 percent share of the market, down 13.7 percent year-to-year. Acer also experienced a decline in growth, managing to pick up 9.9 percent of the market on shipments of 8.6 million units, down 10.2 percent from a year ago.

Besides Lenovo, ASUS was the only other top-five company to exhibit growth, increasing its worldwide share to 7.3 percent, an 11.8 percent increase from the same period in 2011.

Gartner Global
Source: Gartner

IDC estimates

In a separate set of estimates published by IDC, Apple took only 12.5 percent of the U.S. market on shipments of 2.05 million units, a 7 percent drop from quarter three 2011. The slightly more conservative outlook was based on a consumer market focused on purchasing competing products and a commercial sector affected by uncertainty in the wider global economy.

HP took the top spot in IDC's estimates of both the U.S. and global shipments, retaining a 26.1 percent and 15.9 percent share of each, respectively. Growth was down year-to-year, however, with a U.S. contraction of 18.8 percent on just under 4.3 million shipments, while worldwide performance slumped 16.4 percent on 13.9 million units shipped.

Dell came in second with 3.4 million U.S. shipments for the third quarter, but it too suffered a double-digit growth contraction of 16 percent to finish the period with 20.7 percent of the market. As for the company's worldwide performance, Dell came in third after dipping 14 percent year-over-year, falling to 10.8 percent of the market.

IDC US
Source: IDC


Compared to Gartner's estimates, the IDC put Lenovo up 9.2 percent for the three month period, giving the company 8.3 percent of U.S shipments. Globally, the Chinese computer maker's shipments grew 10.2 percent to take 15.7 percent of the market, just behind HP.

?PCs are going through a severe slump,? said Jay Chou, IDC Senior Research Analyst. ?The industry had already weathered a rough 2Q12, and now 3Q12 was even worse. A weak global economy as well as questions about PC market saturation and delayed replacement cycles are certainly a factor, but the hard question of what is the 'It' product for PCs remain unanswered. While Ultrabook prices have come down a little, there are still some significant challenges that will greet Windows 8 in the coming quarter.?

IDC Global
Source: IDC


Like Gartner, IDC sees the upcoming Windows 8 launch as a main factor in the global PC shipment slowdown, though performance in the sector should pick up during the fourth quarter. It is unclear how the Microsoft release will affect Apple's share of the market, as Lenovo's strong performance could spill into the holiday season and beyond.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 44


    Apple will sell ONE MORE,


    when the freakin' New iMacs get released !!!

     


    Dear Lord !!

  • Reply 2 of 44


    Hmm...Apple dropped 6.1%, while Lenovo gained 6.1%. (Of course, these are percentages, not number of units)

  • Reply 3 of 44
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    BuffyzDead wrote: »
    Apple will sell ONE MORE,
    when the freakin' New iMacs get released !!!

    Make that two.
  • Reply 4 of 44
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Hmm...Apple dropped 6.1%, while Lenovo gained 6.1%. (Of course, these are percentages, not number of units)

    Still, it's impressive and their worldwide numbers put them not only as the highest growth rate but the number one vendor. Now, that doesn't say anything about revenue or profits and we know that Apple is still far ahead in profits if not both R&P but when you compare them to other Windows-based vendors like HP and Dell I have to wonder what they are doing that the others aren't.
  • Reply 5 of 44

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    While Lenovo enjoyed substantial growth in the third quarter, the overall PC segment was hit with an precipitous drop in shipments due to the imminent launch of Microsoft's Windows 8. Overall, global PC shipments dropped 8.3 percent year-to-year, with shipments barely creeping over 87.5 million units.




    "Retailers were conservative in placing orders as they responded to weak back-to-school sales. By the end of September, retailers were focused on clearing out inventory in advance of the Windows 8 launch later this month," Kitagawa said. "On the professional side, there was minimum impact from Windows 8 in the quarter because the professional market will not adopt Windows 8 PCs immediately after the release."

     


     


    So, if this article is accurate, buyers are holding off for computers shipped with Windows 8... Now if the response to Windows 8 bombs or is even lukewarm, it is possible that Apple may benefit greatly from the reaction. In addition, this means there is a building pent-up demand for peecees. Perfect time for Apple to roll out the new iMacs.  :-)


     


    At 13.6% of the market, this could be the biggest percent of the USA market Apple has ever had! According to marketing theory, once an idea (buy OSX) has gained 15% to 17% acceptance it will grow much faster from there on... 

  • Reply 6 of 44
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    solipsismx wrote: »
    Still, it's impressive and their worldwide numbers put them not only as the highest growth rate but the number one vendor. Now, that doesn't say anything about revenue or profits and we know that Apple is still far ahead in profits if not both R&P but when you compare them to other Windows-based vendors like HP and Dell I have to wonder what they are doing that the others aren't.

    What I'd like to know is where are people buying these Lenovo PCs at? ThinkPads I've seen but not desktops.
  • Reply 7 of 44
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    What I'd like to know is where are people buying these Lenovo PCs at? ThinkPads I've seen but not desktops.

    Notebooks are the bigger market now for consumers, right? If we're talking about corporations we might be looking Lenovo desktops in many countries. Even cheap PCs with server-based apps like Cirtix XenApp could be a way for a sub-$300 PC to be more than sufficient for a company.
  • Reply 8 of 44
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    So, if this article is accurate, buyers are holding off for computers shipped with Windows 8... Now if the response to Windows 8 bombs or is even lukewarm, it is possible that Apple may benefit greatly from the reaction. In addition, this means there is a building pent-up demand for peecees. Perfect time for Apple to roll out the new iMacs.  :-)

    At 13.6% of the market, this could be the biggest percent of the USA market Apple has ever had! According to marketing theory, once an idea (buy OSX) has gained 15% to 17% acceptance it will grow much faster from there on... 

    I think Apple will benefit but I doubt there is a huge wait for PCs with Win8. In my experience most PC buyers simply don't rush out for the latest version of Windows. Then there is a huge number of PC sales for companies that hold off on the new for as long as possible. Still using WinXP for desktops and just upgraded to WinServ2k8 at my company. Many users, even the "technical" ones are still using WinXP at home and many that are using WIn7 know less about Win8 than we've read about and discussed on this forum. Even among their primary customer MS has lost much of the magic. Now it's just Stockholm Redmond Syndrome that keeps them using an ever decaying OS and HW.
  • Reply 9 of 44
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    Make that two.




    +1 for me.

  • Reply 10 of 44
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Hmm! I had the first post, but it seems to have gotten lost.

    Anyway, what I said was that these numbers are just estimates (guesses). We have to wait until all these companies release their numbers for the quarter. Apple's won't be until the 25th.
  • Reply 11 of 44


    Originally Posted by melgross View Post

    Hmm! I had the first post, but it seems to have gotten lost.


     


    Did you post from the main page? Currently no posts from appleinsider.com are accepted. They're just lost in the aether. Huddler is working on a fix, and it should be repaired tomorrow.


     


    *cough*

  • Reply 12 of 44
    mikeb85mikeb85 Posts: 506member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post





    What I'd like to know is where are people buying these Lenovo PCs at? ThinkPads I've seen but not desktops.


    I've seen tons of Lenovo laptops (ThinkPad and IdeaPad) at the University I'm at.  I also see Lenovo desktops at both banks I do business at, in certain of the school labs, and at all sorts of random businesses I frequent.  Lenovo is huge in the enterprise, whether it's workstations, desktops, laptops or servers...  Of course, Lenovo isn't the most popular 'consumer' brand, but for professionals and corporations they're #1.  


     


    From the numbers, most of the Lenovo buyers are also outside the US (Lenovo has a higher market share worldwide than in the US).  

  • Reply 13 of 44


    Who in their right mind would consider any of the other vendors??? - Worldwide purchasers, you should be ashamed of yourselves! image  - You can't tell me you would prefer a skanky ACER, Dell, HP or Lenovo over the beauty that is Apple industrial design..... unless its a copy, but then you have to run M$....oi,oi,oi....

  • Reply 14 of 44
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,090member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    Make that two.




    Make that three!

  • Reply 15 of 44


    Make that 4, 5 and 6.

  • Reply 16 of 44
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,712member
    Did you post from the main page? Currently no posts from appleinsider.com are accepted. They're just lost in the aether. Huddler is working on a fix, and it should be repaired tomorrow.

    *cough*

    It's a Scamsung attack on AI I'm sure.

    Meanwhile enough with referring to Macs as PCs!
  • Reply 17 of 44


    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post

    It's a Scamsung attack on AI I'm sure.


     


    Oh, they already actively use other avenues of attack here.

  • Reply 18 of 44
    ]
    solipsismx wrote: »
    Make that two.

    Make that 3'( I thought u only liked iThingys)
  • Reply 19 of 44
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    It's a Scamsung attack on AI I'm sure.
    Meanwhile enough with referring to Macs as PCs!

    Nothing wrong with that. A Bugatti Veyron is a car... but it's not just a car.

    Note that if we want to call all personal computing devices 'PCs', which is technically accurate, we can't then say that Macs aren't 'PCs' because there is an association with WInPCs.
  • Reply 20 of 44
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,712member
    Oh, they already actively use other avenues of attack here.

    Really, I was kidding! Other than a constant stream of paid shills I didn't realize they'd gone further.
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