Apple's Mac continues to buck worldwide PC shipment decline in Q1
Riding a resurgence in Mac sales that kicked off in the fourth quarter of 2016, Apple saw a 4.5 percent increase in shipments over the three-month period ending in March as the wider PC market fell further into the red.

The latest statistics from Gartner put Apple in fifth place with 4.2 million units shipped, good for 6.8 percent of the market. The figure is up 4.5 percent from the same time last year.
Chinese PC maker Lenovo boosted its lead with 12.4 million units shipped, up 1.2 percent from last year to take 19.9 percent share of the global market. HP trailed with 12 million shipments, which translated to 19.5 percent of the market, up 6.5 percent from last year.
Dell and Asus ended the quarter in third and fourth place, respectively. Dell shipped an estimated 9.4 million units, up 3.4 percent from 2016. Asus, the only top-five brand to suffer a sales contraction, shipped 4.6 percent million units for a 7.3 percent marketshare, down 14 percent year over year.
Acer placed sixth behind Apple with a 6.7 percent share of the market on 4.2 million shipments, down 1.8 percent from the year ago quarter.
According to Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa, PC vendors will need to place more emphasis on enterprise sales as consumer demand dries up. Overall PC shipments dipped 2.4 percent year over year, continuing a negative sales trend that has been in effect for more than five years.
"The top three vendors -- Lenovo, HP and Dell -- will battle for the large-enterprise segment," Kitagawa said. "The market has extremely limited opportunities for vendors below the top three, with the exception of Apple, which has a solid customer base in specific verticals."
In the U.S., Apple maintained its fourth place spot with 1.5 million units shipped and 12 percent of the market, down 0.9 percent year over year. HP again led the U.S. with 3.6 million PC shipments and a 29.1 percent share of the domestic market, a 15.9 percent uptick from 2016. Dell dipped 4.3 percent year over year to 3.2 million units shipped, still good enough for a 26.4 percent marketshare. Lenovo managed 1.7 million shipments for a 14 percent marketshare.
As usual, IDC also released preliminary estimates on Tuesday, with figures contradicting Gartner's estimates. For reference, Gartner includes ultraportables like Microsoft's Surface hybrid in its metrics, but does not account for tablets like iPad.
According to IDC, Apple came in fourth with 4.2 million units shipped and a 7 percent global marketshare. Compared to last year, the performance was up 4.1 percent. HP led the pack with 13 million shipments for a 21.8 percent take, up 13.1 percent on the year. Lenovo followed close behind with a 20.4 percent share of the market on 12.3 million units shipped, up 1.7 percent year over year.
Dell shipped 9.6 million PCs in the first quarter, according to IDC, rating a 15.9 percent marketshare. Acer tracked close behind Apple in fifth place with 4.1 million units shipped and a 6.8 percent marketshare.
Interestingly, IDC has the overall PC market up slightly at 0.6 percent, which if accurate is the first sign of sector growth in more than five years.

The latest statistics from Gartner put Apple in fifth place with 4.2 million units shipped, good for 6.8 percent of the market. The figure is up 4.5 percent from the same time last year.
Chinese PC maker Lenovo boosted its lead with 12.4 million units shipped, up 1.2 percent from last year to take 19.9 percent share of the global market. HP trailed with 12 million shipments, which translated to 19.5 percent of the market, up 6.5 percent from last year.
Dell and Asus ended the quarter in third and fourth place, respectively. Dell shipped an estimated 9.4 million units, up 3.4 percent from 2016. Asus, the only top-five brand to suffer a sales contraction, shipped 4.6 percent million units for a 7.3 percent marketshare, down 14 percent year over year.
Acer placed sixth behind Apple with a 6.7 percent share of the market on 4.2 million shipments, down 1.8 percent from the year ago quarter.
According to Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa, PC vendors will need to place more emphasis on enterprise sales as consumer demand dries up. Overall PC shipments dipped 2.4 percent year over year, continuing a negative sales trend that has been in effect for more than five years.
"The top three vendors -- Lenovo, HP and Dell -- will battle for the large-enterprise segment," Kitagawa said. "The market has extremely limited opportunities for vendors below the top three, with the exception of Apple, which has a solid customer base in specific verticals."
In the U.S., Apple maintained its fourth place spot with 1.5 million units shipped and 12 percent of the market, down 0.9 percent year over year. HP again led the U.S. with 3.6 million PC shipments and a 29.1 percent share of the domestic market, a 15.9 percent uptick from 2016. Dell dipped 4.3 percent year over year to 3.2 million units shipped, still good enough for a 26.4 percent marketshare. Lenovo managed 1.7 million shipments for a 14 percent marketshare.
As usual, IDC also released preliminary estimates on Tuesday, with figures contradicting Gartner's estimates. For reference, Gartner includes ultraportables like Microsoft's Surface hybrid in its metrics, but does not account for tablets like iPad.
According to IDC, Apple came in fourth with 4.2 million units shipped and a 7 percent global marketshare. Compared to last year, the performance was up 4.1 percent. HP led the pack with 13 million shipments for a 21.8 percent take, up 13.1 percent on the year. Lenovo followed close behind with a 20.4 percent share of the market on 12.3 million units shipped, up 1.7 percent year over year.
Dell shipped 9.6 million PCs in the first quarter, according to IDC, rating a 15.9 percent marketshare. Acer tracked close behind Apple in fifth place with 4.1 million units shipped and a 6.8 percent marketshare.
Interestingly, IDC has the overall PC market up slightly at 0.6 percent, which if accurate is the first sign of sector growth in more than five years.
Comments
The really interesting thing is that only Acer, Asus, and the nebulous "Other manufacturer" numbers went down. Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Apple all went up. Apple didn't even have the most growth.
It kind of implies that it's the low end that's shrinking, eaten by the tablet market. The high end PC market seems to be growing, just not as fast as the low end is shrinking.
The IDC figures don't include Asus as a separate listing, and show Acer slightly up, although still behind Apple. The top 5 there are all up, with the "Others" down substantially. Again, suggests that the low-end PC and also cheaper tablets, are what's dragging the market down. Must be that 2-in-1s aren't as popular as people think.
Allegedly because "everyone" hates the new MBP. Or at least about 50% of users hate it.
Personally, I love it, but I don't have a media platform to talk about it, so my opinion doesn't count.
Also... jibe is the word you were looking for.
The verb jibe means to be in accord or consistent with something. ... As a verb, jive means to dance, talk, or mislead.
enterprise
professionals who buy laptops for home/business use
people with serious educational needs i.e. STEM majors
gamers
Asus and Acer focus on cheaper devices. However:
"PC vendors will need to place more emphasis on enterprise sales as consumer demand dries up." simply is not going to happen. Tablets and smartphones do not replace PCs for a lot of (indeed most) tasks, and there is also no evidence of consumer sales migrating to macOS. Further, "Overall PC shipments dipped 2.4 percent year over year, continuing a negative sales trend that has been in effect for more than five years" is true, the 2.4 percent decline is very small, another indication that the free fall that began due to the iPhone and iPad has stabilized. So, no real change here. The migration of people from Windows to Mac as a result of the halo effect of the iPhone/iPad - as well as the horrible Windows 8 - ended several years ago, as Mac sales went up from 1 million a quarter to 4-5.5 million a quarter but has not exceeded that. And the people who only bought computers for entertainment/web surfing purposes have already largely swapped out for mobile devices, although with the downward momentum of iPad and tablet sales and the lack of large increase in smartphone sales, all evidence points to the trend of folks who were never seriously using PCs in the first place giving them up for mobile devices has also largely tapered off, as the folks who were going to do so have had since 2008 - and especially since 2010 and the iPad - to make the switch.
1. Why do Surface Books count as PCs while iPads do not? Because Surface Books run Windows 10 (or Windows 8) which is a PC OS. The iPad uses iOS which is a mobile OS. Making the Surface Book a PC device in a different form factor but the iPad a mobile device. Essentially Surface Book to Dell laptop = iPad to iPhone. The iPad and the iPhone both run iOS. Not only that, all iPads can now place and receive telephone calls, and some iPads have LTE! So is the iPad a phone? No. It is a mobile device in a different form factor. The same with the Surface Book. Running a PC OS makes it a PC.
2. Chrome OS versus iPad: more of the same. First off, even if Chrome Books run a web browser as an OS, it is still a PC OS. For goodness sakes, most Chromebooks don't even have touchscreens. Also, Chrome desktop devices exist, as do dongles like the Chromebit. By contrast, no Chrome OS phones or tablets exist. Chrome OS is not a mobile operating system but rather a PC operating system designed for web and cloud applications. Chrome OS devices generally run on 2 GB of RAM and lower end Intel processors? So did most Windows Vista laptops and desktops ... as well as Macs sold around the same time period. (Even today, a Mac Mini has RAM/CPU similar to higher end Chrome Books, with the difference being Intel i5 for a good Acer or Asus Chromebook versus an i7 for a Mac Mini ...both have 4 GB of RAM.) Also, Android only requires 512 MB of RAM and a dual core Qualcomm 200 SOC (or an even cheaper SOC from MediaTek) and - unlike Chrome OS which has always supported it - only recently provided support for full blown multi-tasking, and even now only supports 2 windows. Mobile OS for mobile devices. Finally, with Chrome OS, the operating system is not a web browser. Google would like you to believe that. Or at least they DID want you to believe that in the past, until the devices' failure in the marketplace forced them to offer offline support and Android apps (which include but are not limited to other web browsers). "Chrome OS" is merely marketing, as the OS for Chrome OS devices is actually Debian Linux - similar to Ubuntu - with desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, MATE (or soon to be dead Unity) replaced with Google's desktop environment. Granted originally that desktop environment was limited to the Chrome browser as well as Chrome extensions and plugins - called "apps" - that run on top of the Chrome browser, but now with Android apps even that no longer exists. But it was always possible and relatively easy to convert "Chrome OS" to full blown Debian or Ubuntu and switch back and forth between the Chrome OS desktop environment and a more mainstream Linux desktop like GNOME - though most Chrome OS users who do this choose LXDE or another lightweight desktop due to most Chromebooks having 2-4 GB of RAM and an underpowered CPU ... virtually no one uses Unity, even those who have touchscreen and 2 in 1 Chromebooks that Unity is designed around because Unity is a resource hog - and the Chrome OS desktop environment. But the main thing is that Chrome OS devices are laptops, not mobile devices. Most of them don't even have USB type mobile chargers ... instead they use the same power cables - and batteries - that low end laptops do. In other words, a Chromebook - especially one with decent specs that has been converted to full Ubuntu - is more akin to a MacBook Air than an iPhone.
In other words, there is more to stuff like this than merely cost ... and the desire of Apple fans to inflate their market positions. There are real issues like technology, operating systems and the use cases for which the product is designed. So bottom line: if Apple wants iPads to be counted as PCs by analysts, they need to put macOS on them. No point in claiming that macOS can't run on iPads. Modern iPads are more powerful - indeed much more powerful - than MacBook Air and Mac Mini devices. But Apple won't put macOS on the iPad Pro to compete directly against Surface Book (and obviously Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops) because it would upset their philosophy and business strategy. That and the reality that it would not change a whole lot. The iPad Pro would still cost more than a great many PCs - even very good machines aimed at enterprise and professionals - and even more so if you include a keyboard and mouse. And it would still lack monitor support (modern laptops can support up to 4 monitors and have VGA, DVI, HDMI and Thunderbolt-compatible ports ... or they simply have multiple HDMI or mini-HDMI ports) as well as USB 3.0 or USB Type C ports, even if some peripherals can theoretically be attached to the lightning port. (Before you claim that such things aren't needed in the first place, that argument won't be sustainable until MacBooks have the same lack of support for monitors and peripherals that iPads do.) So while an iPad running macOS would not exactly sell to those wishing to use it as a PC - save those who are thoroughly uninformed about its limitations - at least then Apple fans would be able to be able to claim to be the top PC maker. Or something, whatever it is worth.
If you don't like the fact that a company uses soldered-on DRAM in their products you'll point to the speculative or raw data and say "See, I told you they are screwing up and the declining numbers are directly attributable to that freaking soldered-on DRAM." Sure. A more relevant assessment of the state of the companies and the markets they serve would be to look at the earnings and profitability, i.e., bottom line numbers, of the companies on these lists. If they're doing the right things for their business and serving their customers they will likely be making a healthy profit. Like Apple. So those folks who are looking for retribution for their perceived product flaw, like soldered-on DRAM or lack of touch screen, and see that the object of their distain is making money hand over fist with products that aren't to their liking, it's harder to point the finger and say "I warned you about the soldered-on DRAM - but you didn't listen and now you will suffer." But no suffering occurs. At that point they may realize that what's important to you is just another singular opinion. But companies in the business of making a profit must serve a much larger base of customers. If they understand the needs and hit enough of the right marks the bottom line numbers from their earning statements tell the real story.