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U.S. Mac Sales Grow 28.5% in Holiday Quarter, PC Market Suffers Worst Decline Ever [Updated]

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MacRumors

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Apr 12, 2001
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Apple saw its U.S. PC marketshare rise from 9.9 percent to 13.7 percent in the holiday quarter year-over-year, according to data just released from Gartner. The 28.5 percent rise shows a substantial increase in Mac sales, largely at the expense of HP and Toshiba.

Dell and Lenovo are the only other PC firms who saw significant rises in marketshare in the quarter.
In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 15.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, a 7.5 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2012 (see Table 2). Despite a 10.3 percent decline in shipments, HP continued to be the No. 1 vendor in the U.S., as it accounted for 26.5 percent of shipments.

"Holiday sales of technology products were strong in the U.S. market, but consumer spending during the holidays did not come back to PCs as tablets were one of the hottest holiday items," said Ms. Kitagawa. "We think that the U.S. PC market has bottomed out. A variety of new form factors, such as hybrid notebooks, drew holiday shoppers' attention, but the market size was very small at the time. Lowering the price point of thin and light products started encouraging the PC replacement and potentially some PC growth in 2014."
Click to expand...
gartner_4Q13_us.jpg
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q13 (Thousands of Units)​

The U.S. PC market fared slightly worse than the global market, dropping 7.5 percent in unit sales, from 17.07 million units last year to 15.8 million units this year. Continuing a trend from the last several quarters, tablets have continued to eat into PC sales and though hybrid tablet-notebooks have appealed to some shoppers, the market size for those devices remains very small. As a result of the demand for tablets, the overall PC market saw its worst unit decline in history.

gartner_4Q13_us_trend.jpg
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-4Q13 (Gartner)​
It's important to note that this data is preliminary -- last year, Gartner revised its preliminary Apple numbers from 12.3% down to 9.9%, likely because last year the newly introduced iMac was in extremely short supply.

Apple's US PC marketshare has seen consistent growth over the past seven years, rising from just under 5 percent to the current 13.7 percent.

Update: IDC has released its own estimates of PC shipments for the fourth quarter of 2013, painting a very different picture of Apple's performance. According to IDC, Apple shipped only 1.6 million Macs in the U.S. during the quarter, compared to Gartner's estimate approaching 2.2 million units. IDC's estimate puts Apple's share of the U.S. market at 9.3%, with the company falling into fourth place after being passed by Lenovo.

Apple will report its official earnings for the quarter on January 27, providing some insight into whether Gartner's or IDC's estimates are closer to reality.

Article Link: U.S. Mac Sales Grow 28.5% in Holiday Quarter, PC Market Suffers Worst Decline Ever [Updated]
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/09/gartner-pcmarket-statistics/
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Razeus

macrumors 603
Jul 11, 2008
5,348
2,030
Because people really don't need PC's anymore in their homes. Tablets will do just fine. Email, Facebook, music/radio, casual gaming, calenders, note taking - all just fine on a tablet.

PC's/Macs are only need for power users (video, photographers, hardcore gamers, business users on Excel, etc.)
 
scbn

scbn

macrumors 6502
Jul 25, 2010
272
22
I thought Mac sales were declining last year; maybe there was turnaround in December.
 
theelysium

theelysium

Suspended
Nov 18, 2008
562
360
sguser said:
Indeed. I've been Windows user for 15 years. I've switched to Mac OS X and I couldn't have been happier.
Click to expand...

I like MS Windows 8 commercial... "It's the same experience on all devices." Yeah the same horrid experience on all their devices. At least MS is constantly horrible.

Again, thank you MS for making every PC and Tablet user flock to Apple. LOL
 
I

Iamthinking

Suspended
Jul 31, 2010
184
3
More good apple news

These great sales charts can mean only one thing: stock charts for apple will plummet. Renewed chants of "apple is doomed"

As an apple shareholder, I am hoping for some bad news from apple, as I'm hoping the stock will go up, as the trend seems to be.:)
 
R

Rodster

macrumors 68040
May 15, 2007
3,177
6
Razeus said:
Because people really don't need PC's anymore in their homes. Tablets will do just fine. Email, Facebook, music/radio, casual gaming, calenders, note taking - all just fine on a tablet.

PC's/Macs are only need for power users (video, photographers, hardcore gamers, business users on Excel, etc.)
Click to expand...

QFT !

Even the iPad has cannibalized Mac sales. I use my iPad's 85% and my Mac 15% of the time. Apps are typically so much better on the iPad.
 
Digital Skunk

Digital Skunk

macrumors G3
Dec 23, 2006
8,097
923
In my imagination
theelysium said:
I like MS Windows 8 commercial... "It's the same experience on all devices." Yeah the same horrid experience on all their devices. At least MS is constantly horrible.

Again, thank you MS for making every PC and Tablet user flock to Apple. LOL
Click to expand...

I wouldn't even go as far as to say that it's Windows 8 that's causing the decline. I am using a Dell Venue 8 Pro now and it's the best tablet experience I've ever had hands down. Better than an iPad or Android tablet.

Windows 8 functions as advertised, the app selection is a moot point, and Windows has gotten Apple beat by a mile in terms of being able to switch into and out of a fully touch or mouse and board UX/UI. Even with dual displays plugged into an 8" tablet I can get a touch UI on one screen and a full desktop experience on the other. The machine runs Photoshop without a hitch while running other light apps. I've coded websites and made GFX in Illustrator. Lightroom, and it's hungry hippo self, runs decently, but don't load up the library.

Then there's games, where Civ 5 does a fantastic job both in the touch and desktop UI.

Now the hardware . . . . . that's another story. I've already had three Dell related hardware glitches with this thing that the normal user wouldn't have been able to recover from.

mrxak said:
Eventually there will be just Macs, tablets, and home-built PCs.
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I don't even think there will be too many Macs.

The way things are going in the high end market, which usually trickles down to the average user, everything is moving to zero client. Where the grunt of the work is handled by servers that just stream pixels to end users. The 48 core 256GB of RAM servers that Dell and HP make are far better at handling any task you can throw at them.

Soon, even the laptop will be a novelty.
 
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I

iBug2

macrumors 601
Jun 12, 2005
4,531
851
Digital Skunk said:
I don't even think there will be too many Macs.

The way things are going in the high end market, which usually trickles down to the average user, everything is moving to zero client. Where the grunt of the work is handled by servers that just stream pixels to end users. The 48 core 256GB of RAM servers that Dell and HP make are far better at handling any task you can throw at them.

Soon, even the laptop will be a novelty.
Click to expand...

I think we will get 500 Ghz Graphene processors before that happens and even your tablet will be 10 times more powerful than a 48 core server which uses silicone.
 
Klae17

Klae17

macrumors 65816
Jul 15, 2011
1,227
1,577
Cannibalize your own products or someone else will. Post-PC is here!
 
driceman

driceman

macrumors 6502
Mar 13, 2012
313
185
scbn said:
I thought Mac sales were declining last year; maybe there was turnaround in December.
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This is only based on last quarter, the quarter in which they launched OS X Mavericks and the new MacBook Pro lineup.
 
Rogifan

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,116
31,140
Where do they get their data from? Estimates or surveys of retailers?
 
mrxak

mrxak

macrumors 68000
Apr 16, 2004
1,650
697
Drifting through space in a broken escape pod
Digital Skunk said:
I don't even think there will be too many Macs.

The way things are going in the high end market, which usually trickles down to the average user, everything is moving to zero client. Where the grunt of the work is handled by servers that just stream pixels to end users. The 48 core 256GB of RAM servers that Dell and HP make are far better at handling any task you can throw at them.

Soon, even the laptop will be a novelty.
Click to expand...

You're overlooking latency and bandwidth. It will never be faster to do computing off-site. It may not even be cheaper.

While it's true that fewer people need real computers, plenty of use cases will never be better on a tablet. The overall PC market will shrink, but not disappear. When that happens (and Apple, as this article indicates, is still growing), the low-margin mass market PC businesses will fade and the more diversified, higher-margin companies like Apple will survive.

Then there's the gaming market. A resurgence in PC gaming is going to keep home-built hobbyist PCs going for a long time to come. Some speciality shops that build and optimize desktop computers for gaming or other specialized tasks (workstations) will keep going as well, but the low-cost mass produced PC business is obviously being taken over by consumption devices like tablets and phones. For the rest, there's high-end desktops, and anything that people want to do with a desktop, they'll still want to do on the go, so laptops aren't going anywhere. A tablet has never been a viable alternative to a laptop for certain tasks, and never will be.

So, we'll see a collapse of low-end computing, replaced by tablets and other mobile devices, the expansion of high-end computing, and an overall shrink of the market. Macs, tablets, home-built PCs.
 
P

Preed08

macrumors regular
Dec 5, 2011
221
288
I can understand why. I have both windows 8 and and a Macbook pro...and I like OSX so much that I had to make my windows machine dual boot Mac and Windows.
Windows 8 is not that bad, but the start menu leaves much to be diesired. OSX has a clean looking, professional interface that many people seem to love.
 
I

iBug2

macrumors 601
Jun 12, 2005
4,531
851
mrxak said:
You're overlooking latency and bandwidth. It will never be faster to do computing off-site. It may not even be cheaper.
Click to expand...

Even today, it's faster to do computing off site if you are dealing with big computations.
 
LagunaSol

LagunaSol

macrumors 601
Apr 3, 2003
4,798
0
Great news. There will always be a place for "traditional" computers. I love my iPad and use it 75% of the time, but there are a lot of things I still need my iMac for. And probably always will.

Good to see Apple is still innovating in this space. Now about that missing prosumer sub-$2k headless Mac....
 
H

hexor

macrumors 6502
Nov 26, 2002
271
88
Minnesota
I wonder if they include returns/refunds in their numbers. A friend of mine bought a Dell XPS and that broke in the first month. Replacement one took several weeks to get. The replacement only lasted a day before it failed. Now he is getting a refund.
 
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