Mac shipments grew in Q1 2022 as PC market slumped

Remember, IDC was the one who predicted the Microsoft's Windows Phone would overtake the iPhone in two years. So take anything IDC says with a grain, maybe two grains, of salt. Their reports are s.w.a.g's at best as are the rest of analyst’s reports. And why should we care anyway?

AppleInsider said:

Apple's Mac business is continuing to enjoy growth in Q1 2022, according to IDC, with shipments continuing to rise year-on-year in the period while the PC market slows down.

The PC market has enjoyed two years of double-digit growth, in part spurned on by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while the industry endured a year-on-year reduction in shipments in Q1 2022, Apple was among a group of vendors that continued to see growth in the period.

In figures released on Sunday by IDC, Apple accumulated 7.2 million shipments of Macs and MacBooks in Q1 2022. This is an increase of 4.3% year-on-year from Q1 2021, which was for 6.9 million shipments, thanks to hardware releases including the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro.

The increase meant Apple's share of the PC market also grew, from 8.1% to 8.9%, on a backdrop of a contracting market. As an industry as a whole, PC shipments dropped 5.1% year-on-year from 84.8 million to 80.5 million.

Of Apple's competitors Lenovo is still in the top spot with a 22.7% market share, despite a 9.2% shrink in shipments to 18.3 million. Second-place HP's 15.8 million shipments is a reduction of 17.8% year-on-year, but it manages to hold onto a 19.7% market share.

Dell saw growth of 6.1% ,with its 13.7 million shipments representing a 17.1% share of the market, keeping it ahead of third-place Apple. Fifth place is considered a tie between Asus and Acer, with each having 5.5 million and 5.4 million units respectively, though while Acer dropped shipments by 5.9%, Asus saw 17.7% growth.

The overall decline is attributed to ongoing supply chain shortages, as well as a "challenging comparison to a strong 1Q21," states IDC. In April 2021, IDC said Apple's Mac business saw a 111.5% YoY jump in shipments, with the industry growing 55.2% YoY.

"The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected," said IDC group vice president. "The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges."

In Apple's Q1 results in January, Mac revenue reached $10.85 billion, marking both a year-on-year increase in revenue of 25.1% and the Mac unit's first peak into double-digit billions.

Read on AppleInsider

Great news! Apple's refocus on Mac with Apple Silicon is turning the tide. 

The PC market has enjoyed two years of double-digit growth, in part spurned on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anymore color on this? I would have thought the pandemic was the primary reason, like 95% of the reason or the only reason, for why there was double digit growth in PC sales. 

waveparticle said:
Great news! Apple's refocus on Mac with Apple Silicon is turning the tide. 

Yes. Nice to see. As a niche player in the PC market, Apple will hopefully hit about 15% marketshare, or double the units they are shipping now. They are a platform that has no similarity to PCs: different CPUs, different GPUs, different software, different supply chain for the important hardware and software bits, and different services infrastructure in both enterprise and consumers. 

I'm a broken record on this. It's really important that they get to iPhone levels of marketshare, about 15%, so that the ecosystem of software and services can get large enough to become self-sustaining, where there isn't an immediate rejection to buy a Mac because of incompatibility  to some IT dept's requirements, or that this or that software doesn't run on macOS, or FPS games aren't available. Enterprise IT departments would love not to support Macs. It's an awkward niche mostly forced on them by workers or executives. My boy wanted to play FPS games. That automatically meant getting a PC, well, we built one from ordered parts. Not even a thought of getting a Mac. There is lots of software that needs to be on macOS. Matlab should be a first class citizen. MS Project needs to be on macOS. Lots of software not on macOS that give a bit of drag to Mac unit sales.

Achieving a level of unit share where Macs are self-sustaining will make things easier for everybody. Where you don't have to worry about software support or the IT dept not buying them and whatnot.