Mac Shipments Estimated to Be Down Over 20% While Demand Surges in Q1 2020

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

iPad Pro already costs more than many PCs while being a limited device. A beefier iPad Pro will cost even more. What's the point?

Agreed, Apple needs to drop back the 2020 IPP price down to $650 if not the market share won't be improving at all.

 

[Abazigal]

Agreed, Apple needs to drop back the 2020 IPP price down to $650 if not the market share won't be improving at all.

Are we forgetting that Apple has an entire lineup of iPads catering to a variety of price points? If you can’t afford the top-of-the-line iPad Pro, there’s the more affordable iPad Air or even the entry level ipad. This in turn frees Apple to give the iPad Pro all the bells and whistles for users willing to pay a premium for the best ipad experience Apple has to offer.

 

[Azrael9]

“If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.” ― Steve Jobs

Azrael.

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Agreed, Apple needs to drop back the 2020 IPP price down to $650 if not the market share won't be improving at all.

They jacked up the price from £565 for the 12.9 inch here in the UK right up to £800-£1000. The recent non update should have come with a price cut and the same with the Mac Mini.

Anybody figures that Macs will get cheaper with the move to ARM can dream on. It will only tighten the noose on profits.

Meanwhile, awaiting meaningful updates to the iMac, Mac Mini, iMac Pro, iPad.

Azrael.

 

[JoelTheSuperior]

Price? Dude you use it every day, get one with the best trackpad and build quality you can.

further if Catalina is a problem the answer is NOT windows rotfl.

Price of the desktop? Quite a bit. Probably about £2k all in, but still substantially less than the equivalent Mac would've cost me. As far as laptops go, we'll have to see. Depends on what I end up with really.

And how can I put it, Catalina in and of itself wasn't the problem, but it really does reflect the badly declining quality of Apple's desktop operating systems. I genuinely want to love them, but honestly, the quality just isn't there anymore, and Windows 10 has been seriously solid.

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

Interesting. And Ithought Intel has been setting sales records quarter after quarter lately. What's replacing those computers? iPhones? Definitely not iPads. iPad sales are way down compared to five years ago.

Agreed, but the mac sales are getting worse and quite possibly selling below 2,000,000 units by Q2 2020.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Agreed, but the mac sales are getting worse and quite possibly selling below 2,000,000 units by Q2 2020.

We’ll know Q2 Apple revenue in a couple weeks, but Apple doesn’t disclose units sold.

Depending on the worldwide recession/depression, Q3 may be even worse than Q2; it’s impossible to know yet though.

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

I imagine there has to be an iMac refresh this year...maybe even soon...bigger screens. Also, the MacPro line is insanely priced. I don't understand how anyone really wants to buy these...especially adding thousands more for an Apple monitor and mount.

Absolutely agreed, the lack of redesign on iMac will exacerbate the sales of mac and that's just unacceptable.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Absolutely agreed, the lack of redesign on iMac will exacerbate the sales of mac and that's just unacceptable.

Apple keeps designs around until there’s a reason to change them. They don’t just change for the sake of change.

It seems Apple doesn’t equate new design with higher sales. You might think you know better, but Apple disagrees.

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

I’m having trouble finding good jigsaw puzzles in stock.

Also I want them to update the 16” MBP or release a decently spec’d 14” model.

It's probably in the next few weeks but 14” models needs to be priced reasonably and adopt M.2 form factor for repairability.

 

[PickUrPoison]

It's probably in the next few weeks but 14” models needs to be priced reasonably and adopt M.2 form factor for repairability.

Prosser says May, who knows 🤷‍♂️

But there won’t be price decreases, though the base SSD will very likely increase from 128GB to 256GB (presuming they keep the two TB3 model). So effectively, a $200 price cut at every SSD capacity.

And of course, there will be no M.2 drive, that ship sailed many years ago. Apple uses their T2 for a disk controller, and that is 100% incompatible with M.2.

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

I think the bigger question is what happened to the iPhone demand. It’s immaterial for the Apple bottom line if they sold 21% fewer Macs. However, a 21% drop in iPhone sales is significant. The reality is probably much worse than that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sold 50% fewer phones if not in the first quarter, then in the second quarter.

Nothing prevents people from holding onto their existing phones for an extra year or two while they are facing salary reductions, furloughs, and likely layoffs.

As for the demand for non-Mac computers vs the demand for Mac computers, if I had four kids all taking distance learning school and I only had one extra Mac at home, I wouldn’t go and buy three more Macs so that my kids could attend school from home. I would buy three Chromebooks for $250 each or three Windows laptops for $300 each. If the school districts take it upon themselves to equip kids with a device suitable for distance learning, 99% of them will buy Chromebooks or Windows laptops and not Macs. Apple has let education down a long time ago. Apple has no distance learning platform, no web conferencing platform, and no affordable computing platform suitable for distance learning. Now contrast this with Google that has Google Classroom, Google Meet (video conferencing), and Chromebooks or contrast it with Microsoft that has Office 365, Microsoft Teams and a plethora of cheap laptops running Windows 10.

The city I live in (one of the major US metro areas) school systems use either the Google platform or the Microsoft platform. Apple has nothing at all to offer the education in this pandemic.

The reduction in Q1 2020 mac sales is significant and likely the most dramatic drop in recent years.

 

[Stella]

Technologically, no.

Institutionally, yes.

If Apple ports Xcode to any other platform, it will be iPad OS.

iPads don’t have enough RAM for an effective port of Xcode that could replace the Mac.

 

[Abazigal]

iPads don’t have enough RAM for an effective port of Xcode that could replace the Mac.

What is the allure of Xcode on the ipad even? I doubt Apple would even bother releasing an ipad with 16gb of ram just to cater to this niche use case.

 

[Stella]

What is the allure of Xcode on the ipad even? I doubt Apple would even bother releasing an ipad with 16gb of ram just to cater to this niche use case.

I’m not sure - it’s frequently bought up though, isn’t it!

iOS and iPad both are not in a state where using xcode would be as good User Experience as using a Mac.

 

[nvmls]

I’m not sure - it’s frequently bought up though, isn’t it!

iOS and iPad both are not in a state where using xcode would be as good User Experience as using a Mac.

Well I'm sure in these moronic times, there could be plenty of ipad users who would even force themselves to use it just to claim it "replaced" their computers. Create happy wannabes, Apple is brilliant at it.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I recently bought a new desktop and I was genuinely toying with the idea of buying an iMac.

In the end I went for a PC I built myself for the following reasons:

1. Price. Apple's prices aren't even remotely competitive, especially now that AMD are offering some serious competition. Apple's BTO prices are downright insulting. £600 for 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 is just utterly ridiculous when a 3200MHz set is £138 on Amazon.
2. AMD. Really all I need to say - Intel hasn't offered any serious upgrades to their processors in a few years now, meanwhile AMD are offering 12 and 16 core CPUs for not much more than Intel's 8 core offering, with lower power consumption and heat output. Intel simply aren't competitive right now.
3. Upgradeability. Being able to just replace the graphics card, processor, RAM, whatever, as needed is a huge deal to me. Being able to replace the display without replacing the entire system is also pretty awesome. Need more storage? Just add more internal drives. Doing this with a Mac requires a ton of external enclosures, gets messy quite quickly.
4. Support. Apple's support, in my experience, simply isn't very good. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't say it's good either. Being without my MacBook for a week because the keyboard doesn't work sucks. I can buy a new one and return it when the original is fixed, but that's really my only option. Meanwhile on my PC, if a component goes bad I just replace the component myself. Apple won't sell me components for Macs for any amount of money.
5. Windows 10. I've never been a huge fan of Windows. Actually I've been a very vocal critic, but the truth is Windows genuinely is a lot better than it used to be. The Linux subsytem is genuinely awesome, and dev work that I used to think would be impossible on a PC now isn't an issue at all.
6. macOS Catalina. I have to be honest, as much as I hate to be one of those who complains about Catalina, because it's rarely as bad as its made out to be, the OS has been problematic for me. Bizarre bugs and issues that simply shouldn't happen, along with other annoyances. macOS still has focus stealing, which annoys the hell out of me. A hell of a lot of my old software is now unsupported, with no way to get it to run.
7. Games / Software Support. I'm not much of a gamer, but it's genuinely awesome to have access to such a huge catalogue of AAA games. Software as well is a big one here - Apple routinely breaks support for legacy software, yet on Windows I can find an app from 10 years ago and not have to worry about whether it'll work with my system, it almost certainly will.

The worst part out of all of this, is that I'm now genuinely considering getting a PC laptop as well, because honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I genuinely am starting to like Windows.

Very well said. I'm already at the point where, after a decade of using iPhones, I know for sure my next phone will be an Android (unless Apple do actually bring back the jack, but I can't see it happening). I've been struggling with working out what to do when my 2015 MBP dies, as the quality, disadvantages, and cost, of new MBPs, even with the new 16", makes me shudder, and I've been toying with the idea of actually, god forbid, switching to Windows. Your list of points has actually made me realise this could be a viable reality!