Mac sales growing faster for Apple in China than US

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014


Apple's growth story in China now extends beyond the iPhone and iPad, with Mac sales there also continuing to outpace the U.S. in terms of year over year growth, according to a new report.



Analyst Ben A. Reitzes with Barclays Capital said in a note to investors on Wednesday that he's not concerned by recent domestic sales data that some have interpreted as slower-than-expected Mac sales growth in the U.S. The NPD Group released figures on Tuesday that showed U.S. Mac sales up 12 percent year over year, a number that still easily outpaced the rest of the industry.



But Reitzes still believes Apple's total global sales will be up 22 percent year over year, thanks largely to rapid expansion in China. He said his checks with industry sources indicated that Mac sales grew faster in China last quarter than they did in the U.S.



"We believe Mac sales remain relatively strong even as the economy weakens, benefitting from new stores in China and strong sales of the MacBook Air," he said. "Even though the economy and HDD shortages are concerns that could limit upside, we remain comfortable with our estimate for 22% (year over year) Mac unit growth for (the fourth quarter of calendar 2011) given overseas momentum -- especially in China where growth is much higher."



Apple previously highlighted tremendous growth in its Mac platform in the Asia-Pacific region last April, when officials noted that Mac sales were up 76 percent in the region, compared to 25 percent in North America. But those figures represented an entire region, while Reitzes believes Apple's greatest growth will come from one nation: China.



In fact, he said he believes Mac growth for the quarter will prove to have been "really driven by China" when Apple publicly announces its earnings next week. The company's earnings release and subsequent conference call are scheduled to take place after markets close next Tuesday.



A poll released last November found that Apple was the most desirable PC brand in all of China. A survey of 1,553 Chinese consumers revealed that 21 percent of respondents were considering a Mac for their next PC purchase.











Beyond China, Mac sales for the holiday quarter will also be bolstered, Reitzes said, by the fact that there was an extra week of sales in just-concluded 14-week December quarter. He believes those extra seven days could help Apple by "several hundred basis points."



The benchmark for Apple was set in the company's September quarter of last year, when it sold a record 4.89 million Macs in the three-month span. If the company manages to top that sum, it could achieve its first-ever quarter 5-million quarter for the Mac platform.



Apple's continued worldwide growth in Mac sales has seen it continually outpace the rest of the PC market. Just last week, Gartner revealed that Apple was the No. 3 PC maker in the U.S., riding high on industry-leading 20.9 percent growth during the last quarter.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    aizmovaizmov Posts: 989member
    China is a growth market not too surprising. Good news nonetheless and should quiet the folks at OSNews who continue to predict the demise of Apple and Mac unless Apple licenses the OS to 3rd party hardware makers.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    ko024ko024 Posts: 68member
    I dont think the TRUE potential of China is baked into aapl share price yet. All signs point towards a MASSIVE growth story there. Everyone keeps asking me how apple can sustain its growth, and I love being able to answer them with one word: China... ~1,300,000,000 people-and the apple story there has been spelled out for us already... aapl will double over the next 2 years because of it.... imo
  • Reply 3 of 11
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Aizmov View Post


    China is a growth market not too surprising. Good news nonetheless and should quiet the folks at OSNews who continue to predict the demise of Apple and Mac unless Apple licenses the OS to 3rd party hardware makers.



    Well duh, China only has what?? A hundred-gazillion more people than we do?



    This is great news for Apple. With such a huge, untapped market, no where really to go but up!
  • Reply 4 of 11
    wow truely amazing the growth that Apple keeps making....
  • Reply 5 of 11
    geekdadgeekdad Posts: 1,131member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by xavier83 View Post


    wow truely amazing the growth that Apple keeps making....



    I agree and China seems like the biggest growth market of all!
  • Reply 6 of 11
    blursdblursd Posts: 123member
    You mean a new market with 1 Billion people is experiencing more growth than a well established market from over three decades with 300 Million people.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by blursd View Post


    You mean a new market with 1 Billion people is experiencing more growth than a well established market from over three decades with 300 Million people.



    Precisely! Another example of stupid journalism by someone utterly ignorant of basic statistical facts.
  • Reply 8 of 11
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bwana_Dik View Post


    Precisely! Another example of stupid journalism by someone utterly ignorant of basic statistical facts.



    i think the growth rate is talked here. for apple, china is brand new, so its growth in china from 0% can not be seen by matured market in US anymore.



    in US, internet users are about 80% of population of 300m; in china, internet users are about 45% of population of 1.3b. among US internet users, if 10% of them use Mac, it would be around ~24million of them; among chinese internet users, if 10% of them use Mac, it would be ~50million of them use MAC. of course, these are coarse estimate, because ppl can share one PC in rural areas or poor areas, etc.



    india is catching up and soon there would be another half billion ppl over there on internet. so both china and india would be great growth area for apple to sell more their stuff.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bwana_Dik View Post


    Precisely! Another example of stupid journalism by someone utterly ignorant of basic statistical facts.





    It is amazing to recall that not long ago many trolls on AI were stating Apple would never sell much in China because firstly no one had any money and secondly, they'd just make fakes any.
  • Reply 10 of 11
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anakin1992 View Post


    i think the growth rate is talked here. for apple, china is brand new, so its growth in china from 0% can not be seen by matured market in US anymore.



    in US, internet users are about 80% of population of 300m; in china, internet users are about 45% of population of 1.3b. among US internet users, if 10% of them use Mac, it would be around ~24million of them; among chinese internet users, if 10% of them use Mac, it would be ~50million of them use MAC. of course, these are coarse estimate, because ppl can share one PC in rural areas or poor areas, etc.



    india is catching up and soon there would be another half billion ppl over there on internet. so both china and india would be great growth area for apple to sell more their stuff.



    I live in hope the damn will break here in IT and we will see massive growth for Macs in the US. We would be starting from pretty low numbers too for OS X remember so growth could be steep here also statistically.
  • Reply 11 of 11
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    It is amazing to recall that not long ago many trolls on AI were stating Apple would never sell much in China because firstly no one had any money and secondly, they'd just make fakes any.



    And there are still some here that predict Apple's demise and fall to 2% market share. No current statistics of the last quarter's sales of any of Apple's products are showing a decline in any area, except iPods. Since iPhones and iPads have iPod as a feature, that's an understandable decline.
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