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Apple Again Trails U.S. PC Market in Key Back-to-School Quarter as Tablets Continue to Eat Into PC Sales

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Apr 12, 2001
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Research firms Gartner and IDC today released their preliminary calculations of PC shipments for the third quarter of 2013, finding that worldwide shipments fell by roughly 8% over the year-ago quarter, extending the current sales slide to 18 months. Top worldwide vendors Lenovo, HP, and Dell held up reasonably well, but smaller vendors such Acer and Asus experienced dramatic year-over-year declines in of around 22% according to Gartner and 34% according to IDC.
"The third quarter is often referred to as the 'back-to-school' quarter for PC sales, and sales this quarter dropped to their lowest volume since 2008," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "Consumers' shift from PCs to tablets for daily content consumption continued to decrease the installed base of PCs both in mature as well as in emerging markets. A greater availability of inexpensive Android tablets attracted first-time consumers in emerging markets, and as supplementary devices in mature markets."
Click to expand...
gartner_3Q13_us.jpg
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q13 (Thousands of Units)​
According to Gartner's numbers, the U.S. market held up significantly better than the global market, actually registering a 3.5% increase in shipments led by fourth-place Lenovo's 24.6% gain. For its part, Apple was the only one of the top five vendors to see a year-over-year decline in shipments, falling by 2.3% to take 13.4% of the market. Apple was, however, able to show some relative strength over the previous quarter, using its popularity in education to increase its U.S. share from 11.6% in the second quarter to 13.4% in the back-to-school third quarter.

gartner_3Q13_us_trend.jpg
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-3Q13 (Gartner)​
IDC's numbers painted an even worse picture for Apple, with the company's 11.2% year-over-year decline in U.S. Mac shipments trailing the overall U.S. market, which declined just 0.2%. As in the Gartner survey, third-place Apple, which garnered 11.6% of the U.S. market according to IDC, was the only one of the top five PC manufacturers to see a decline in shipments.

As usual, neither Gartner nor IDC covered Apple's worldwide market share for the quarter, as the company does not rank among the top five vendors on a worldwide basis.

The only Mac product Apple updated leading into the back-to-school shopping season was the MacBook Air, which was updated at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The iMac, Apple's flagship desktop machine, was not updated until late last month while the MacBook Pro has not been updated since February. Apple's Mac mini is also due for an update, and an all-new version of the Mac Pro is set for release by the end of this year.

Article Link: Apple Again Trails U.S. PC Market in Key Back-to-School Quarter as Tablets Continue to Eat Into PC Sales
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/09/apple-again-trails-u-s-pc-market-in-key-back-to-school-quarter-as-tablets-continue-to-eat-into-pc-sales/
Klae17

Klae17

macrumors 65816
Jul 15, 2011
1,227
1,577
Should have updated the MacBook Pros, iMac, and Mac mini at WWDC.
 
A

aitikin

macrumors newbie
May 24, 2006
8
0
Obviously

Mac sales falter in the PC market when they haven't done any update to their more budget friendly laptops in over a year. Why is this a surprise or considered news? In fact, I disagree with headline in the fact that they seem to be implying that it's because of the iPad.
 
V

Virtualball

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2006
401
11
The drop was due to them not updating their laptops...

I know I was willing to buy a rMBP back in June but yet they're still not here. :mad:
 
N

newdeal

macrumors 68030
Oct 21, 2009
2,510
1,769
People want the best and newest, they don't want to buy a cMBP when the retina is sitting right there and they can't afford the retina. They also think to themselves it would be nice to have a DVD drive and for all of the above reasons were choosing PCs. If the rMBPs are a reasonable price by next back to school I would guess there will be a rebound
 
J

johnfatz

macrumors newbie
Dec 28, 2011
2
0
Not really a surprise considering college is an expensive time and adding cutting back on electronics would be a logical choice for many.

Especially when many applications work on windows only (engineering applications etc.) - MS Office is still very much considered a Windows application despite being available on Mac. Yes windows is on Mac but why pay extra will be some people's thinking.

Apple doesn't have a laptop in the budget range and will continue to lag in this area until it decides to go that route.
 
O

OLDCODGER

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2011
959
399
Lucky Country
It is interesting to realize, if tablets are taking over from PCs, just how little the average consumer actually does with a laptop/desktop.
 
Krazy Bill

Krazy Bill

macrumors 68030
Dec 21, 2011
2,985
3
I really don't see what iPads have to do with this.

If a company doesn't make their OSX line a priority... then nobody will buy it. It's really that simple.
 
slu

slu

macrumors 68000
Sep 15, 2004
1,636
107
Buffalo
Update the Mac mini and I'll buy one tomorrow. There are a lot of people waiting.
 
kemal

kemal

macrumors 68000
Dec 21, 2001
1,825
2,219
Nebraska
Yes we are holding on Apple purchases waiting for new models. FINALLY we are buying iMacs. We would really love to get MBPs but won't buy old ones.

I'm so glad Apple put all their resources into lacquered machined polished polycarbonate.
 
C

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,561
1,672
Redondo Beach, California
OLDCODGER said:
It is interesting to realize, if tablets are taking over from PCs, just how little the average consumer actually does with a laptop/desktop.
Click to expand...

Yes, most people are just passive consumers. You'd think that students at least would be using their computers to at least write papers. I'm sure the #1 use for a computer is as a media player.
 
L

lilo777

macrumors 603
Nov 25, 2009
5,144
0
So, total PC sales:

3Q 2012 - 15582
3Q 2013 - 16121

and "Research firms Gartner and IDC today released their preliminary calculations of PC shipments for the third quarter of 2013, finding that worldwide shipments fell by roughly 8% over the year-ago quarter"

Apparently they taught me the wrong math at school.
 
E

ericinboston

macrumors 68020
Jan 13, 2008
2,005
476
johnfatz said:
...Apple doesn't have a laptop in the budget range and will continue to lag in this area until it decides to go that route.
Click to expand...

Apple doesn't have a laptop in the budget of COLLEGE STUDENTS, either. Every Mac BEGINS at $999 (for the paltry 11" screen and 128GB drive). Realistically a user would want the $1200 Mac laptop but sure, let's continue talking about the $999 one. Unless they are a Mac user, he/she THEN ALSO HAS all the other reasons of not buying an expensive new Mac to learn to use.

Students can get very nice PC laptops for $750. There's almost no reason for the average student (or above average) to plunk down $1000 (or more) on a PC laptop for college to write papers, create presentations, check email, and do class participation stuff on a collaboration website. I wouldn't steer college students to $500 laptops, but yes, some do buy them because of their budget and/or their realization that they just need something to write some papers from time to time.
 
Michael Goff

Michael Goff

Suspended
Jul 5, 2012
13,329
7,421
lilo777 said:
So, total PC sales:

3Q 2012 - 15582
3Q 2013 - 16121

and "Research firms Gartner and IDC today released their preliminary calculations of PC shipments for the third quarter of 2013, finding that worldwide shipments fell by roughly 8% over the year-ago quarter"

Apparently they taught me the wrong math at school.
Click to expand...

This is the math commonly known as Post-PC math. It says that computer sales must go down, they just have to.
 
teknikal90

teknikal90

macrumors 68040
Jan 28, 2008
3,346
1,901
Vancouver, BC
this is the reason why i am liking Microsoft's Surface idea.
People arent buying a Macbook Air and an iPad....they're buying just iPads...
Pretty soon they're start to see that for a little bit more they can get the Surface 3 or Surface 4 by that time, that does more computing than the iPad in the same small package.
 
Tankmaze

Tankmaze

macrumors 68000
Mar 7, 2012
1,707
351
"Consumers' shift from PCs to tablets for daily content consumption continued to decrease the installed base of PCs both in mature as well as in emerging markets. A greater availability of inexpensive Android tablets attracted first-time consumers in emerging markets, and as supplementary devices in mature markets.
Click to expand...

Computer is going to be like a truck. ;)
 
sseaton1971

sseaton1971

macrumors 6502
Feb 9, 2012
431
11
A couple of things...

1) The graph still shows Apple trending upward over the last several years. One can't look at just one or two data points. Let's see what happens in a few more quarters.

2) I wonder how Apple's revenue compares with the revenues of the other PC makers.
 
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