Macs again outperform the market as Apple takes 10.6% of US PC shipments [u]
Apple saw its domestic Mac shipments grow to 10.6 percent of the market in the first quarter of 2012, as the company once again grew while the rest of the PC market saw its shipments slide. [Updated with additional data from IDC]
Gartner Results
Gartner on Wednesday announced its quarterly PC shipments, revealing that Apple maintained its place as the No. 3 PC seller in the U.S. Apple's year-over-year shipments grew a slower-than average 3.8 percent, but that was still enough to outpace the rest of the market, which lost an average 3.5 percent.
The market leader for the quarter was HP, which grew its shipments by 6.6 percent year over year. HP took a 29 percent share of the U.S. market on shipments of 4.5 million PCs.
In second was Dell, which shipped 3.5 million PCs, good for 22.3 percent of the market. Dell saw its shipments slide 3.6 percent from the same period in 2011.
Apple remained in third place, as it was last quarter, but with a slightly smaller share of the market. At the end of 2011, Apple took 11.6 percent of PC shipments in the U.S., but the Mac maker was off by a percentage point to start 2012. Still, it grew its share from the first quarter of 2011, when Apple represented 9.8 percent of shipments.
Apple shipped an estimated 1.6 million Macs in the first quarter of 2012, according to Gartner, representing 3.8 percent growth from the same period in 2011. That put it ahead of fourth-place Acer, which shipped an estimated 1.4 million PCs over the three-month span, giving it a 9.1 percent share. Its shipments slid 25.9 percent year over year.
Apple, as usual, didn't crack the top five PC makers worldwide. In terms of global shipments, HP was the leader with an estimated 15.3 million PCs shipped, taking a 17.2 percent share.
Lenovo saw the greatest year-over-year gains, with its 28.1 percent surge pushing it to second place on shipments of 11.6 million PCs, good for a 13.1 percent share. In third was dell, which slid 1.6 percent to 9.8 million shipped PCs, giving it 11 percent.
In fourth worldwide was Acer, which dropped 9.2 percent to 9.7 million shipments. It took a 10.9 percent share. And finally in fifth was Asus, which grew 21.3 percent and shipped 5.3 million units, for a market share of 6 percent.
Source: Gartner
In all, an estimated 89 million PCs were shipped in the first quarter of calendar 2012. Total global shipments were said by Gartner to be up 1.9 percent year over year.
"The results were mixed depending on the region, as we saw the EMEA region perform better than expected with PC shipments growing 6.7 percent in the first quarter of 2012, while Asia/Pacific performed below expectations, in part because of slow growth in India and China," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
"While the PC industry has high expectations for strong growth in the emerging markets, the slowdown of these countries in this quarter provides a cautionary notice to vendors that the future growth for the PC industry cannot heavily depend on the emerging markets even though PC penetration in these regions is low."
IDC Preliminary Results
Also on Wednesday, numbers from IDC painted a slightly different picture as it saw healthier worldwide PC shipment growth and a small uptick for the U.S. market.
IDC also found third-place Apple's share of the domestic market hovering at around 10 percent, growing 5.1 percent year-to-year.
Leading the industry was HP, shipping 4.6 million units to end the first quarter with a 28 percent share of the market, up 6.6 percent from the period one year ago. Dell took second, with the IDC results showing the same year-on-year 3.6 percent decline as Gartner's findings.
Source: IDC
Grossly differing from Gartner's data are IDC's picks for fourth and fifth place. Gartner estimates put Acer group in fourth after showing a precipitous decline of 25.9 percent, while IDC sees the company in fifth place after dropping only 3.8 percent year-to-year. Both firms agree that Toshiba was down roughly 19 percent from the year ago period, putting the Japanese electronics company in fourth place according to IDC.
Perhaps the most significant difference between the Gartner and IDC numbers are the amount of units sold by makers in the "other" category, with IDC seeing nearly one million more shipments than Gartner. This amounts to a 6.9 percent gap between the two research firms and likely accounts in part for IDC's estimated one percent growth in overall domestic shipments.
"Slow growth in the U.S. shows that despite interesting and new form factors like all-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs and Ultrabook–class notebook PCs, the market remains conservative and focused on replacements," said IDC Vice President of Worldwide Consumer Device Trackers Loren Loverde. "We expect vendors, retailers and channel partners to be working very hard this year to focus their product lines and their general operations as they prepare for the year-end holiday season, because that alone will likely determine if there is any growth at all in the U.S. market in 2012."
Over 87 million units were shipped worldwide as the market saw a slight increase of 2.3 percent from last year. IDC partly blames the slow growth on the availability of hard drives, which were constrained in the first quarter due to flooding in Thailand. The firm is looking ahead to stronger sales as HDD supply stabilizes and Microsoft launches its next generation Windows 8 operating system.
""Nevertheless, history has shown that periods of slower growth are followed by recovery as improving technologies make replacements as well as new purchases increasingly compelling," Loverde said. "As a result, we expect PC shipments to pick up significantly by the fourth quarter and beyond as HDD supply and pricing are normalized, Windows 8 is launched, and replacements pick up."
[ View article on AppleInsider ]
Comments
Wait, I thought Apple had 15% marketshare in the US? Wait, marketshare's not the same as shipping percentage, is it?
:::IDIOT MODE:::
Ah, it was Switzerland I was thinking of, anyway. Maybe.
Why is HP listed on that chart twice?!?
It's an error, but I don't remember which company it actually is.
Ah, it's Toshiba.
Why is HP listed on that chart twice?!?
And kind of conflicting numbers too!
It's an error, but I don't remember which company it actually is.
toshiba
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...hreadid=120611
HEYYYYY .... how can Apple see a slow down in sales and Gartner see an increase??
I guess it is all about the perception - in this case the number of computers sold were less than anticipated, but still higher year over year. Which makes me wonder - who does the projections at Apple (or was it an analyst that pulled those number out of their spreadsheets?) Surely they knew a model refresh was coming down the pipe, and adjusted their sales projections accordingly ... even Digitimes knew that changes were afoot.
Last Apple Q was 15.5 million iPads. Remove the holiday sales and extrapolate a recent non-holiday month or two and it's still a significantly different picture.
If I am doing 80% more on my iPad that I used to do on my Mac, is it relevant that the Mac marketshare is only 10% when iPad marketshare is 70%?
Which statistic is more important?
I go with the latter. The iPad is the future, and Apple is clearly the leader, and this time, rightfully so.
As a Mac owner who uses Windows exclusively, I expect to see Apple providing better support (in the form of updates) for Windows users, for example firmware updates.
"As a Mac owner who uses Windows exclusively" ... you mean you bought a Mac to run it in Bootcamp 100% of the time?
"As a Mac owner who uses Windows exclusively" ... you mean you bought a Mac to run it in Bootcamp 100% of the time?
I knew a guy in college that did that. 17" MacBook Pro, Windows 7. Had removed OS X entirely.
As a Mac owner who uses Windows exclusively, I expect to see Apple providing better support (in the form of updates) for Windows users, for example firmware updates.
As someone who is in the minority (you), and lord only knows how small a minority that is, don't hold your breath.
The days when Windows running on Macs was a necessary selling point are long gone. Yes, you can run Windows on a Mac, in some form, but it isn't incumbent on Apple to provide you with a first-rate experience in that area.
So you can "expect" it, and keep expecting it, but it's doubtful that Apple will make much more of an effort than what you're seeing currently.
As someone who is in the minority (you), and lord only knows how small a minority that is, don't hold your breath.
The days when Windows running on Macs was a necessary selling point are long gone. Yes, you can run Windows on a Mac, in some form, but it isn't incumbent on Apple to provide you with a first-rate experience in that area.
So you can "expect" it, and keep expecting it, but it's doubtful that Apple will make much more of an effort than what you're seeing currently.
"The days when Windows running on Macs was a necessary selling point are long gone"
I am currently studying to be an engineer and with the exception of microsoft office, there are very few programs that i use that will actually run on Mac, my friends who have macs all have windows on it because of it ( those who are engineers). I personally want a mac but windows is a must if i can afford one next year.
As for the average consumer, i'm sure you are correct.
As someone who is in the minority (you), and lord only knows how small a minority that is, don't hold your breath.
The days when Windows running on Macs was a necessary selling point are long gone. Yes, you can run Windows on a Mac, in some form, but it isn't incumbent on Apple to provide you with a first-rate experience in that area.
So you can "expect" it, and keep expecting it, but it's doubtful that Apple will make much more of an effort than what you're seeing currently.
interesting though is reports (probably a few years ago now) that the best PC laptops were macs, why not use the best hardware you can get your hands on.
I would struggle with any more microsoft products on my machine than absolutely necessary, but at least the consistency of hardware makes the mac a good platform to run windows on.
We run approx 50 windows on macs machines in our autocad drafting dept, for exactly that reason
"The days when Windows running on Macs was a necessary selling point are long gone"
I am currently studying to be an engineer and with the exception of microsoft office, there are very few programs that i use that will actually run on Mac, my friends who have macs all have windows on it because of it ( those who are engineers). I personally want a mac but windows is a must if i can afford one next year.
As for the average consumer, i'm sure you are correct.
mechanical engineer here.
do you want matlab? OSX..
autocad? OSX..
monodevelop? OSX
SPSS? OSX..
visual studio is the only one.. but it won't take long.
interesting though is reports (probably a few years ago now) that the best PC laptops were macs, why not use the best hardware you can get your hands on.
I would struggle with any more microsoft products on my machine than absolutely necessary, but at least the consistency of hardware makes the mac a good platform to run windows on.
We run approx 50 windows on macs machines in our autocad drafting dept, for exactly that reason
autocad?
why not use the mac version?
mechanical engineer here.
do you want matlab? OSX..
autocad? OSX..
monodevelop? OSX
SPSS? OSX..
visual studio is the only one.. but it won't take long.
Solidworks (last i looked only windows)
MathCad(last i looked only windows)
and a program i had to use to program a board i used for projects, that was called ardiuno
but i am mechanical as well and as far as i know, and i haven't looked in a while
all three of those are windows only