MacBook Pro and MacBook Air overwhelmingly drive Apple Mac sales

Apple customers prefer portable devices across Mac, iPhone, and iPad

Mac sales have been declining, with even the 2023 MacBook Air seeing a significant drop in demand. A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) says that of all Apple's Mac sales, though, a clear 90% are the portable MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.

Apple does not release the details of its Mac sales figures, and CIRP does not detail its research methodology. The report does claim to cover all US Mac sales for the year of 2023.

In that period, CIRP says that the MacBook Pro represented 51% of all Mac sales in the US. The MacBook Air took 39%.

The remaining 10% of sales is distributed fairly uniformly across the various desktop Macs available. The iMac and Mac Pro comprise 4% and 3% of the total sales, respectively.

Then both the Mac mini and the Mac Studio represent just 1% of US Mac sales each.

Within the MacBook Air sales, there's a small but noticeable preference for the larger screen size. About 53% of buyers chose the 15-inch model.

With the MacBook Pro, the small difference is reversed as 54% chose the 14-inch edition, while 46% bought the 16-inch model.

The preference for larger display sizes in laptops suggests a changing consumer mindset towards portability without compromising functionality. Apple's strategic focus on laptops doesn't diminish the value of desktops.

CIRP's report concludes that, naturally, the sales figures are why Apple tends to concentrate on promoting its portable Macs. It theorizes that new, thinner designs are making the larger-screen MacBook Air more attractive than their arguably bulkier predecessors.