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Apple's Mac Shipments Down in Q3 2017 Amid Continuing PC Market Decline

Can't say that I'm surprised, Apple's high prices are not helping matters at all. With the laptop, there's the on going issues with the keyboard, so I think word of mouth, bad PR, is not helping as well.

I'm surprised by Lenovo seeing double digit decreases in the US, I guess enterprise expenditures (or the lack there of) may be the cause of that
 
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Between the ports and the touch bar I think Apple really stunted their sales. But unless they put out a comparable non touch bar model or one with more ports, we can't know for sure. All I know is that I'm still rocking my 2009 MBP because I'm not getting that touchbar. I've spent too much money on Itunes to not be able to pause, play, FF, RW, raise and lower the volume with one click. I use those keys a thousand times a day. I still can't understand how Apple doesn't realize they are used for Itunes media. Something that makes them a lot of money.
 
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I’m holding off buying until the iMac Pro comes out. My daughter is going to be very happy this Christmas.

The rest of my Macs are working fine so no need to upgrade.
 
lkrupp said:
You’re reading more into this report than is there because of your negative bias. The entire PC market is declining because the average consumer doesn’t need them anymore. Most people can accomplish what need with their phone or tablet. Of course there will always be a need for PCs but we just need fewer of them these days.
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That's one part of the story. The other part is that there is almost no need to buy a more powerful computer every now and then as it used to be in the past. Everything an average user wants to do can still be done on a machine with a Core 2 Duo processor - and those are now what, a decade old?

The tablet market is in decline for similar reasons -- the tablet from three or four years ago still is good enough to run today's apps. And the people have also figured out that tablets only have very few use cases -- and lost their interest in them.
 
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davedude said:
Is anyone really surprised? The "new" MacBook Pros are a disappointment. I think Apple knew this so they raised prices in order to boast margins.
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I agree. I am sticking with the 2015 MacBook Pro until Apple wises up and bring back the ports that I need. As for the TouchBar, I couldn’t care less about it. I don’t need it.
 
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According to Gartner, ongoing DRAM shortages worsened during the third quarter of 2017, impacting sales and leading to an overall PC shipment decline of 3.6 percen
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Oh so that's why.....WT#?
 
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I bought a Mac last quarter, but it was a used 4,1 Mac Pro that I’ve been upgrading for cheap. Cutting edge? No, but it replaced a terribly slow 2010 Mac Mini, and I was able to add a 7870 for $75, and a 6-Core X5670 for $35. Seems plenty fast for me, a sentiment that I’m sure is a major contributor to the desktop slow down.
 
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Michael Scrip said:
You can say how bad the new Macbooks are... you won't be alone.

But clearly someone bought 4,613,000 Macintosh computers in the last 3 months... and I'd imagine most of them were laptops. (but I doubt many of them were old 2015 refurbs)

So are people purposely buying these terrible computers? :p
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Yes they are because they're uneducated. I'd put money on it that the vast majority didn't even bother looking at any spec at all.

They're buying it because 1) it's got an apple logo 2) company bought it 3) they simply don't know it's not a good value or 4) it simply does what they want it to do.
 
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The self built market is a different world. Retailers sold out of all of their stock of coffelake processors in minutes basically worldwide. That same thing happened over and over with all the crazy launches this year: Ryzen, Thread Ripper, Skylake X (that 7820x was scarce for a while), and now coffeelake (autocorrected as "coffeecake").

That's a lot of computers not accounted for. And that's not touching the GPU market, which is bonkers right now.
 
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I have a 2011 MacBook Pro I been waiting 2 years now to upgrade. Still haven't seen a worth while upgrade. I guess I'll wait for 2018 mbp if not 2019 until Apple gets their itch together
 
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kyleh22 said:
Not surprised to see HP is up. Their Spectre lineup is awesome. Great features at a great price IMO.
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True... but the Spectre series can't be the main reason why HP is up... can it? They're $1,000+ machines.

If I had to guess... I'd say the majority of their sales are still regular ol' Pavilion laptops... i.e. cheap machines.

And for some reason... HP happened to pass Lenovo worldwide by a couple hundred-thousand units this last quarter. Ebbs and flows most likely.
 
It's easy to see why PC sales are down. There is nothing new to buy. I use my MacBook to get work done, not to play with the desktop. The old one get she work done. I basically only use text editors and terminal windows and a web browser. A 2011 vintage iMac does this as well as the new iMac.

The only people who really could use a more powerful Mac are those people making stuff like VR movies. But how many people are media creators compared to media consumers. Must by a 1 to 10,000 ratio at least.

This happens in every industry. Kohler is still making toilets and kitchen sinks. Peole only replace these when they really need to and everyone has one already but Kohler still does a decent sales. Apple will have to learn to live with flat sales. People will buy electronics only when forced to because what they have works.
 
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Michael Scrip said:
You can say how bad the new Macbooks are... you won't be alone.

But clearly someone bought 4,613,000 Macintosh computers in the last 3 months... and I'd imagine most of them were laptops. (but I doubt many of them were old 2015 refurbs)

So are people purposely buying these terrible computers? :p
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Yet 2012,2013,2014,2015 spiked higher than 2016 and 2017. Do you really wonder why?
 
Cut the price, then the sales will rocket because lots of people who love Macs just can't afford it. Apple already dominates the phone industry, now it is time to get back to dominate the PC industry! Do it!
 
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I was one of the shipments lost. Bought a Surface Pro because not impressed with the MacBook offering and quite happy so probably won't come back. If Apple continues to be primarily a smartphone company, they will continue to lose sales on Macs.
 
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Eventually, the price hikes are going to bite them in the core. It's too bad really. Could you imagine how Apple could invigorate the desktop and laptop market if they actually gave a crap (and didn't do bone-headed stuff like get rid of the Mac OS team and scramble to make a modular Mac Pro after the negative press and opinions of the 2016 MBP.)

I am torn: I want a new Apple desktop and the iMacs are a step in the right direction, although it's disheartening to have to spend at least $3k to a machine that will last me several years. Granted, it's a lot more tech inside than previous Macs I've paid that much for, but I have to go custom unless they start shipping stock configs with SSDs.

IDK...
 
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Michael Scrip said:
We've heard the words "PC market is in decline" for years now. Does anyone know which quarter was its all-time high? I honestly don't remember what the market used to be.
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You have to go back a while, but before there were mobile phones - except for the highly expensive analog bricks in the 90s - and laptops looked like slabs of stone, had track balls, and weighed around 8-10 lbs., desktop computers ruled - whether PCs or Macs. After Jobs got fired from Apple, PCs and workstations made by the likes of Sun, and even NeXT, were the rage. On the backend were fading mainframes and hugely expensive supercomputers by CDC, IBM, and Cray. In the late 90s, the backends of the mainframe era were beginning to give way to lesser priced, but highly efficient at performance per price point, rack servers such as the DEC Alphas and various offerings by Sparc and IBM, supplemented by the storage revolution of SANs and NAS. Those are my memories. I think the desktop market is fading, and has been for quite a while - even laptops - because the world of tech has become more mobile. The backend is the "cloud", and the front end is currently mobile phones and tablets. I expect we're waiting for the next revolution in technology which will wed the power and multi-tasking facility of the desktop with the mobile flexibility of the mobile devices. Just speculation ...
 
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