infoTECH Feature

October 09, 2014

Apple Cracks Unexpected New Ground in PC Sales Figures

Most anyone already knew that Apple (News - Alert) was a major name when it came to smartphones, as well as tablets. For mobile devices, Apple was one of the biggest names around with a loyal user base that seemed only too happy to pick up the next version of an Apple device whenever it emerged. But a new report from IDC (News - Alert) suggests that Apple's broken some wholly new ground recently, as sales of its Mac line of desktop devices have surged sufficiently to make Apple one of the top five global vendors in the PC market.

A comparison between the third quarter of 2014's sales numbers and the matching numbers from 2013 show a clear picture of upward gain for Apple. While in the third quarter of 2013, Apple shipped 4.577 million units for a market share of 5.7 percent, both of those numbers saw impressive gains just one year later. In the third quarter of 2014, Apple shipped fully 4.982 million units for a global market share of 6.3 percent.

That was just enough, at last report, to allow Apple to crack the top five, behind Acer (News - Alert), Dell, HP and Lenovo, each of which led Apple by a significant margin. By way of example, the closest competitor, Acer, sold 6.632 million units, beating Apple's numbers by almost two million units. Top seed Lenovo sold better than three times Apple's figures at 15.707 million units. This time around, however, Apple managed to beat out Asus for the fifth slot.

These numbers are particularly noteworthy in that Apple—while a top five computer maker in the United States, this year beating both Lenovo (News - Alert) and Acer—hasn't commonly had that great of a showing worldwide, at least until now. A combination of new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models in a strong back-to-school showing gave Apple the necessary push to crack the top five rankings. It also helps that Apple has put a particular premium on value in recent releases, offering up the most affordable mass-market notebook it's offered yet so far by way of the $899 MacBook Air.

It's worth noting that these are estimates, and reports indicate that the actual numbers will show up on October 20 when Apple brings out its fourth fiscal quarter results ahead of the upcoming holiday shopping season and the likely boost that will bring to numbers as well. But reports also note that Gartner (News - Alert) seems to be calling for increased sales in Apple's favor—though not sufficient to crack the top five worldwide, here losing to Asus—so the official numbers are likely to bear close along these lines.

It's the final numbers that will really tell the story as far as sales numbers go, but if these numbers do bear out it's quite the achievement for Apple, and shows rather convincingly how value is one of the biggest drivers of purchases these days. People are looking for more bang for the buck, so to speak, amid economic uncertainty and instability worldwide, so looking for deals is getting to be more and more of a standard position.

Still, the numbers so far suggest that Apple is on an upward tear here as well, and the better Apple's sales are, the more resources it has at its disposal to innovate and create the next generation of products. It will be interesting to see just what comes of all this, but based on the numbers so far, whatever it is, it's likely to have a market waiting for its arrival.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
FOLLOW US

Subscribe to InfoTECH Spotlight eNews

InfoTECH Spotlight eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the IT industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter

infoTECH Whitepapers