[doublepost=1554979885][/doublepost]Apple Mac sales will continue to decline until they replace their atrocious butterfly keyboards on their MacBooks. Notice that Lenovo sales actually increased by 6.9% this past quarter - and they make the best keyboards in the business.
Amid a decline of 4.6 percent in worldwide PC sales, Apple's Mac sales were also down 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to new PC shipment estimates shared this afternoon by Gartner.
Apple shipped an estimated 3.98 million Macs during the quarter, down from 4.08 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple's market share grew year-over-year though, coming in at 6.8 percent, up from 6.6 percent in Q1 2018.
Apple continues to be ranked as the number four PC vendor worldwide, coming in after Lenovo, HP, and Dell, but ahead of Asus and Acer. Apple also held the number four spot in the year-ago quarter.
Gartner's Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q19 (Thousands of Units)
Lenovo, HP, and Dell all saw shipments grow or remain steady, while Asus and Acer, like Apple, experienced declines. Lenovo, the number one worldwide PC vendor during the quarter, shipped 13.2 million PCs for 22.5 percent market share, while HP, a close second, shipped 12.8 million PCs for 21.9 percent market share.
Dell came in third with close to 10 million PCs shipped and 17.6 percent market share, while Asus and Acer brought up the rear with 3.6 and 3.2 million PC shipments, respectively.
Overall, there were an estimated 58.5 million PCs shipped in Q1 2019, down from 61.4 million in the year-ago quarter.
Apple's U.S. Mac shipments also declined, with Apple shipping an estimated 1.44 million Macs during the quarter, a 3.5 percent decline from the 1.5 million Macs it shipped in Q1 2018. Apple is ranked as the number four vendor in the United States, trailing behind HP, Dell, and Lenovo, but beating out Microsoft.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q19 (Thousands of Units)
HP was the top U.S. PC vendor with 3.24 million PC shipments, followed by Dell with 3.16 million and Lenovo with 1.5 million. The overall PC market in the United States saw a 6.3 percent decline compared to Q1 2018, with a total of 11 million PCs shipped.
Apple's Market Share Trend: 1Q06-1Q19 (Gartner)
IDC also released its shipment estimates this afternoon, and is often the case, IDC's shipping estimates are different than Gartner's due to the variations in the way each firm makes shipment calculations.
IDC also suggests that overall worldwide PC shipments declined, but by just 3 percent with a total of 58.48 million PCs shipped during the quarter.
Apple is also the number four worldwide PC vendor in IDC's estimates, with IDC suggesting Apple shipped an estimated 4.058 million Macs during the quarter, a mere 0.5 percent drop from the 4.078 million Macs shipped in the year-ago quarter.
Data from Gartner and IDC is based on estimates, and while Apple used to provide specific breakdowns of Mac sales, the company is no longer doing so and there will be no way to confirm shipment estimates going forward.
These new numbers follow refreshes of both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air lineups, both of which were overhauled in October 2018, but come prior to the launch of updated iMacs. Apple this year has several additional Mac updates on the horizon, including a new high-end high-throughput modular Mac Pro.
Apple's Mac sales could potentially be suffering due to the negative publicity surrounding the butterfly keyboard issues in the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, a problem that has become increasingly visible due to its impact on even the newest Mac notebooks.
Article Link: Mac Shipments Down in Q1 2019 Amid Worldwide PC Decline
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Mac Shipments Down in Q1 2019 Amid Worldwide PC Decline
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DIY PC build is the way to go if you are able. Cheaper and you get to choose the quality.
Difficult to measure sales though. How would you? People buy components not necessarily to build a complete system.
Difficult to measure sales though. How would you? People buy components not necessarily to build a complete system.
Majority DIY? That can't possibly be true, but if you've got statistics I'll take a look. I would guess 95% of PCs are pre-built especially with laptops essentially the default form factor.
Ditto. DIY PC building is a niche market. I have been a part of that market myself at times, but it certainly is not a majority.
This is literally what PostPC means.
It means that the technology has advanced such that something commonly referred to as a PC is no longer required for many historically “PC” tasks. PostPC IS actually the same as Post Horse and Buggy. There are certain tasks that are best suited for Horse and Buggy, and so the market there exists and people still buy them. BUT, the vast majority of customers will be well suited by a motorized carriage!
not a majority, but it's absolutely massive still. Worth billions of dollars every year.
right now, you can sort of guage the strength of the DIY builders if you look at AMD's CPU sales since they released their Ryzen platform. AMD doesn't get used in prebuilts in any large scale. Virtually the entire list of manufacturers in this list are almost exclusively Intel based (There are a few low volume AMD prbuilts, but that's about it)
In December of 2018, it was rerported that AMD was selling nearly double the CPU's to consumers that Intel was (estimated 2:1).
given above, we can make a reasonable guess that the DIY and Custom build industry for computers is quite sizable chunk that is missing from this calculation (I use CPU's as a core metric because every computer uses 1, and while it's not necessarily true 1 cpu = 1 pc, it's a close enough approximation for this comparison)
In Addition, the DIY market is often one that uses incremental upgrades instead full system replacement at regular intervals. A User in DIY might buy a PC and then upgrade it's internals for several years before replacing the "Shell". how does that count? where does that factor into the "Declining sales" of the industry?
it's a Niche market, that just so happens to be worth billions of dollars selling millions of units a year.
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This is literally what PostPC means.
not a great comparison (the horse and buggy IMHO), as once cars came in, horse and buggies were completely obsolete as cars did everything and anything faster, better to the point that it was a full replacement.
what the "post PC" era is, is a more of a mix. Steve Jobs famously compared the PC to a Truck, when most people required simple cars. It's a good analogy because it recognises that while most people are find driving cars, there will always be the need for heavier workloads that still require that truck (for example, right now in the Apple ecosystem, you require the trucks to build the cars. You cannot build iOS apps to use in those "cars" without the mac "truck".)
this is an ecosystem that requires both the high end and low end. the desktop tower computer full powered desktops, AND the mass market devices. As long especially as we have software that continues to push power envelopes that requires more power, especially on the creation side, the traditional computer is going nowhere.
Try to buy and use a Thinkpad, you will appreciate it.
Anyway you may be right that the numbers are made with the cheap systems.
Not really. I was looking at a Dell XPS 15 a couple days ago and it was only a few hundred cheaper. MacOS, GarageBand, iWork, relatively cheaper audio/video production with Logic and Final Cut definitely make up the price.
Apple dont make computers for Enterprise in the same way the top 3 do. Outside of media you'll rarely see an Apple machine in any office. Dell/Lenovo and HP have those bulk sales contracts on lock.
Kind of meaningless looking at Apple compared to those companies in terms of shipments.
Kind of meaningless looking at Apple compared to those companies in terms of shipments.
Apple has ample opportunity to make headways into this market.
they need:
1. Fleet priced laptop. Your average enterprise / corporate, who isn't "IBM" sized isn't going to spend $1500 / device in a fleet of hundreds/ thousands of computers. We currently use Lenovo, because we can get well suited, decent quality, and really usable laptops for < $800 CAD in the configuration we need. They're very reliable and they last years. Heck, for my own workstation replacement, i was able to get a 6 core, With Nvidia GPU, 500GB of NVME storage for $1400 CAD. LESS than the price of a single MacBook air.
2. Enterprise control and accountability: If Apple integrated itself into an Active Directory environment, with support for basic GPO, DFS and centralized management without paying for 3rd party MDM's, it would be a lot easier and a lot more welcome. But right now, Without paying thousands for an additional MDM setup, I cannot get the required controls over Apple computers. Which means if we bring them in, they would be out of line with our regulatory requirements without further expensive undertaking.
3. Decreasing quality control: I cannot have executives, managers, etc, stuck without their computers due to hardware failure. Which means if I went Apple, I would have to keep additional in house backup/spare devices. At Apple's price points this is quite hard budgetary to swallow. for 1 MBA, I could have 3 low end spare Lenovo laptops in inventory to replace when stuff happens. If one of our users gets a bad keyboard. Or drive failur,e or hinge failure, or speaker blow out, They may end up without a computer for days/weeks while Apple fixes it. Apple for these sort of companies doesn't have a "enterprise" repair option. Often with Lenovo/Dell, they will offer next day on site repairs, or even next day on site replacement. Apple will not do this. In addition with the Lenovo laptops, should one die, I can take the drive out and put it into one of the spare identical computers, with the user losing maybe 30 minutes of downtime. Apple's computers? That data could be gone forever (though users are told not to save locally)
Apple could have easily nailed all of these problems ahead of time and made serious headway into enterprise / corporate, But they chose to chase the consumer market instead.
Most people will have work laptops (PCs) and maybe an IMac at home + 2-3 ipads.
The tech doesn’t change enough to make it “worth” upgrading. I still have an iPad Air1 and IPad Pro 1 and neither will need to be replaced for 5-10 years. The market is just saturated and they really have nothing new to offer.
The tech doesn’t change enough to make it “worth” upgrading. I still have an iPad Air1 and IPad Pro 1 and neither will need to be replaced for 5-10 years. The market is just saturated and they really have nothing new to offer.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
This illustrates my point: someone's current workflow is affected by the early jump forward.
I personally don't use the SD card slot, but having all USB-C is a pain, requiring a complete re-evaluation of my hardware setup and having to buy new dongles to fix what was a non issue before.
The only one benefiting from a lack of port, RAM, and SSD flexibility is Apple. It simplifies their manufacturing, thus cutting costs, and it provides a guaranteed revenue stream when the user has to pay, usually through the nose, for any kind of upgrade or to regain functionality the machines already had.
Those guys never provided a single accurate sales numbers. It's the same thing every quarter. Every quarter for the last 3 years they've seen Mac sales going down and every quarter they were wrong. Usually between 10 and 15% wrong.
Amid a decline of 4.6 percent in worldwide PC sales, Apple's Mac sales were also down 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to new PC shipment estimates shared this afternoon by Gartner.
Apple shipped an estimated 3.98 million Macs during the quarter, down from 4.08 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple's market share grew year-over-year though, coming in at 6.8 percent, up from 6.6 percent in Q1 2018.
Apple continues to be ranked as the number four PC vendor worldwide, coming in after Lenovo, HP, and Dell, but ahead of Asus and Acer. Apple also held the number four spot in the year-ago quarter.
Gartner's Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q19 (Thousands of Units)
Lenovo, HP, and Dell all saw shipments grow or remain steady, while Asus and Acer, like Apple, experienced declines. Lenovo, the number one worldwide PC vendor during the quarter, shipped 13.2 million PCs for 22.5 percent market share, while HP, a close second, shipped 12.8 million PCs for 21.9 percent market share.
Dell came in third with close to 10 million PCs shipped and 17.6 percent market share, while Asus and Acer brought up the rear with 3.6 and 3.2 million PC shipments, respectively.
Overall, there were an estimated 58.5 million PCs shipped in Q1 2019, down from 61.4 million in the year-ago quarter.
Apple's U.S. Mac shipments also declined, with Apple shipping an estimated 1.44 million Macs during the quarter, a 3.5 percent decline from the 1.5 million Macs it shipped in Q1 2018. Apple is ranked as the number four vendor in the United States, trailing behind HP, Dell, and Lenovo, but beating out Microsoft.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q19 (Thousands of Units)
HP was the top U.S. PC vendor with 3.24 million PC shipments, followed by Dell with 3.16 million and Lenovo with 1.5 million. The overall PC market in the United States saw a 6.3 percent decline compared to Q1 2018, with a total of 11 million PCs shipped.
Apple's Market Share Trend: 1Q06-1Q19 (Gartner)
IDC also released its shipment estimates this afternoon, and is often the case, IDC's shipping estimates are different than Gartner's due to the variations in the way each firm makes shipment calculations.
IDC also suggests that overall worldwide PC shipments declined, but by just 3 percent with a total of 58.48 million PCs shipped during the quarter.
Apple is also the number four worldwide PC vendor in IDC's estimates, with IDC suggesting Apple shipped an estimated 4.058 million Macs during the quarter, a mere 0.5 percent drop from the 4.078 million Macs shipped in the year-ago quarter.
Data from Gartner and IDC is based on estimates, and while Apple used to provide specific breakdowns of Mac sales, the company is no longer doing so and there will be no way to confirm shipment estimates going forward.
These new numbers follow refreshes of both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air lineups, both of which were overhauled in October 2018, but come prior to the launch of updated iMacs. Apple this year has several additional Mac updates on the horizon, including a new high-end high-throughput modular Mac Pro.
Apple's Mac sales could potentially be suffering due to the negative publicity surrounding the butterfly keyboard issues in the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, a problem that has become increasingly visible due to its impact on even the newest Mac notebooks.
Article Link: Mac Shipments Down in Q1 2019 Amid Worldwide PC Decline
While I still use my '15 Macbook Pro, I don't plan on buying a Apple any time soon. Their designs are stale, their "newer" designs are horrible, the price which use to be acceptable when you got a better quality designed system, just isn't the case anymore.
Recently built my first PC since 2011, I spent under $2000 USD for a custom water-cooled, quiet, stable i7 9th gen, which I can easily overclock (if I wanted), getting something similar from Apple would have cost me around $7000 and the cooling still isn't ideal.
I love the Apple ecosystem, but they just aren't keeping up with the times. I feel like they've drained all the ideas left over from Jobs and just can't improve/innovate on products any further. Ives was a genius designer, in his prime, but lately, I don't see him doing anything great. Hope to be proved wrong, but so far it's not looking that great.
Recently built my first PC since 2011, I spent under $2000 USD for a custom water-cooled, quiet, stable i7 9th gen, which I can easily overclock (if I wanted), getting something similar from Apple would have cost me around $7000 and the cooling still isn't ideal.
I love the Apple ecosystem, but they just aren't keeping up with the times. I feel like they've drained all the ideas left over from Jobs and just can't improve/innovate on products any further. Ives was a genius designer, in his prime, but lately, I don't see him doing anything great. Hope to be proved wrong, but so far it's not looking that great.
Not touching a new Mac until they completely redesign the keyboard AND it’s been proven reliable. Which means I will be waiting at least 6 months after launch to monitor if there are any issues.
There are many ridiculous things about the Macbooks despite its overpriced pricing.
The Pros ship with 8GB Ram and 128 SSD.?
That both RAM and SSD are not user upgradable.
They are simply creating disposable computers.
That they have removed mag-safe.
That because they want to make the Macbook 0.10% thinner, they are designing a pathetic keyboard.
That whoever is in charge of product design is NOT being fired after 2016 Macbook fiasco.
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Enterprise / corporate is a really boring business to be in and I don't blame Jobs for making the company culture about average consumers first. Remember that in the corporate world the customer is the company not the employee, which is why you end up having to work with crappy stuff for ever because its easier to manage for the IT department, forgetting the people who actually have to use the things!
Furthermore, it's a low margin business that isn't really that profitable. I'd bet without even looking it up that Apple makes more profit off its computer hardware than any of the companies in the top 3.
If it takes the same time to assemble 1 laptop and apple can sell that 1 laptop for 3 times the price of its nearest competitor that's a pretty profitable business model. Especially as Apple doesn't release model after model every 6 months, meaning that marginal cost goes down and down as profits go up (Apple doesn't really lower the price of any Mac over time).
The reason Lenovo, Dell and HP are in the pc game is the lucrative Enterprise support contracts they get for supplying companies with machines. The base machine maybe peanuts but they will have value added deals etc.. Also, HP / Dell will sell printers or server hardware along with the desktops sometimes so there is more value to be gained than just supplying a cheap enterprise desktop.
Finally, most companies will be using VM's in the future if they are not already. At my company all the staff are on VM's with WYSE terminals that cost peanuts. And if a staff member does have a real PC they aren't using any of its capabilities really as they are all on VM's. So why would Apple want join in a market where the value added aspect of their machines is getting completely eroded every day?
Enterprise makes ZERO sense for Apple.
We are a Mac household, with my wife using the MacBook Pro 2012 15" and I have a rMBP 2013 15". I like my display on the 2013, but miss the ethernet port of the 2012. I am a computer network administrator, who does a lot of remote connectivity, and needs ethernet, and occasionally DVD. I occasionally dust off my 2007 MBP 17" backup machine to make sure it is updated, along with a Linux laptop.
I won't purchase another MacBook that doesn't have removable SSD. I had one die on the 2013, and was able to get another "drive" and replace. I upgraded my wife's 2012 with an industry standard SSD. Works nicely. I also want standard phillips screws holding the thing together, so I can clean and replace as required.
I rescued a laptop from the company dumpster, and put Hackintosh on it. Little clumsy, but works, and I can easily do it again. Maybe that will be the solution for my future in the days ahead.
If the laptops were to die right now, I would either replace with the last 17" available (those were Intel i7's), or MBP 2015. I want magsafe, a proper backlit keyboard, HDMI and other video options, and traditional USB. If I could not find such a reasonable laptop, I would go linux. I put my Mac in a box for a week to prove survival, and the only thing that I missed terribly was Mac --> text / imessage tool. Everything else I could do on Linux.
Apple needs to walk in the real world, and deliver useful affordable products. I don't see this while Tim is around living inside the Apple Cloud.
I won't purchase another MacBook that doesn't have removable SSD. I had one die on the 2013, and was able to get another "drive" and replace. I upgraded my wife's 2012 with an industry standard SSD. Works nicely. I also want standard phillips screws holding the thing together, so I can clean and replace as required.
I rescued a laptop from the company dumpster, and put Hackintosh on it. Little clumsy, but works, and I can easily do it again. Maybe that will be the solution for my future in the days ahead.
If the laptops were to die right now, I would either replace with the last 17" available (those were Intel i7's), or MBP 2015. I want magsafe, a proper backlit keyboard, HDMI and other video options, and traditional USB. If I could not find such a reasonable laptop, I would go linux. I put my Mac in a box for a week to prove survival, and the only thing that I missed terribly was Mac --> text / imessage tool. Everything else I could do on Linux.
Apple needs to walk in the real world, and deliver useful affordable products. I don't see this while Tim is around living inside the Apple Cloud.
A strategy that is beginning to fail - three vendors had a different strategy and increased their numbers and their share.
Not being as poor as your peers is not a strategy, not doing as well as your peers certainly isn't.
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Not sure you're totally correct there, even before Apple stopped reporting numbers, they themselves reported declining numbers for the last 3 years?
If Apple essentially gave away their hardware and made 2% margins, they could increase market share more. That’s not Apple’s strategy.
And guess who is right? Apple. They made 3X more profit than any company, so it’s working....better than anyone. Businesses exist to make money and no one does that better than Apple.
The reason HP and Lenovo sell on price is because they have no pricing power. They sell a commodity. Apple sells Macs. Get it?
Oh, you mean the echo chamber forums declaring it a disaster when almost 20M were sold in 2018 and no evidence of massive failure or statistics on failure rates?
Yeah, not buying that either. You have an issue, take it to Apple. You don’t speak for everyone.
Having an actual keyboard for starters. I have a 2017 15inch Macbook Pro and a 2018 T580. If I had to give up one today you can GLADLY take the Mac and my dongle collection.
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Two issues with my 2017 keyboard.
First they key travel is super shallow and it just feels wierd to type on. If I use it alot I get somewhat used to it. However I just have to use my Lenovo T580 and Ahhhhhhhhhh that is what a keyboard feels like!
Second from time to time I get a stuck key. If I push it down repeatedly fast or blow it out with air and not see anything come out it works again. At some point I expect that I will not be able to fix the stuck/non-reponsive key. I should have bought the 2015 model they were still selling in 2017. Great keyboard, magsafe, no useless touchbar, better sounding speakers. Mac's are dead to me and they are not putting out anything that is worth my time and $$$ anymore. Apple is an iOS/Apple Music company to me and everything else is meh at best.