Roger Fingas
Apple's Mac shipments grew 7.3 percent year-on-year during the December quarter, pushing marketshare from 7.7 percent to 8.2 percent — outpacing the PC industry as a whole.
Growth in the overall PC market was just 0.7 percent, fueled mostly by businesses, research firm IDC said in a report published this week. The strongest regions moreover were Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, as the U.S. saw dips in both desktop and laptop computers.
IDC suggested that the U.S. was impacted by the "growing popularity of other mobile form factors," referring to smartphones and tablets. Phones like the iPhone X, 8 Plus, and Samsung's Galaxy Note8 are now big and powerful enough that they can handle many tasks that were previously limited to tablets and PCs.
Apple's iPad line has meanwhile become increasingly Mac-like, mainly due to mutiltasking improvements, processor upgrades, and bigger displays.
Most of the top PC makers are still well ahead of Apple, led by HP at 23.5 percent. Even third-place Dell maintained a significant advantage in the December quarter, claming 15.7 percent. ASUS and Acer tied for fifth place with 6.4 percent, each declining versus Q4 2016.
Across the whole of 2017 Apple saw its marketshare rise 5.9 percent from 7.1 to 7.6 percent. This pace was beaten only by HP, which jumped 8.2 percent from 20.9 to 22.7 percent.
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Eagerly awaiting either the Kaby Lake 'G' 15" rMBP with this combo chip, or else Cannon Lake hexacore.
https://techreport.com/review/33042/intel-eighth-gen-core-processors-with-radeon-rx-vega-m-graphics-revealed
Total laptop shipment by each company is good comparison. If Apple wants to expand base than somehow it needs to offer one each 13"/15" non-touch strip "Go To" Macbook Pro at attractive price(13" - $1299, 15" - $1499) with the decent standard features. Get rid of 128GB SSD. Target millions of High-school,College,casual users. Myself looking forward 2018 13" MBP with Intel hexcore i5, BT 5.0, etc. Keep consistent 4 Type-C ports on low end MBP.
Here we go again with these companies guessing about sales numbers. Until Apple gives us the numbers, this is just speculation. The true numbers could be higher or lower, usually higher, but not always. The same thing is true for the other manufacturers whose numbers weren’t yet released. Some release no numbers at all, so it’s always a guess with them, the way it is with phone and tablet sales for Samsung, who hasn’t released any of those quarterly numbers since the first quarter of 2011.
I watch a lot of new movies every month or so and Apple products definitely have a lot of presence on movie sets (even in So. Korean movies and dramas). The characters seem to be always using iPhones, iMacs and MacBooks, so Apple gets a lot of free advertising. I wonder why movie set directors choose Apple products as they're always said to be so much more expensive. Are they trying to give the characters a touch of class? The Apple logo certainly is distinctive. I don't think I've seen any Chromebooks, though. I'm puzzled why HP is always able to sell far more computer than Apple. Is it due to how expensive Apple computers are or is that HP offers more choices in computer models? HP does seem to offer some rather well-equipped computers while Apple seems to never vary its selection very much.
I'm not complaining, but Apple must have some unusual formula for computer parts selection that they hold fast to. I might be wrong but I keep hearing how tablets are no longer popular and convertibles laptops are in and yet Apple doesn't make any convertible laptop. Is that something that makes any sense at all for Apple to completely ignore? Why throw away potential sales? It's as though Apple isn't even trying to compete with other computer manufacturers which is their usual way of doing things.