William Gallagher
For Q3 2024, Apple saw Mac sales drop significantly year over year, by far the worst figure for the top five computer manufacturers.
Following the 2024 second quarter where it just barely managed to increase Mac sales compared to the same time in 2023, Apple's Q3 has a seen a significant drop. Quarter to quarter, Apple actually saw a rise with having shipped 5.1 million Macs in Q3 compared to 2.32 million in Q2.
However, according to Canalys, in Q3 2023, Apple had shipped 6.1 million Macs. Consequently, comparing figures year over year, Apple was down 17.5% in Q3 2024.
That translates into a loss of market share as well. In Q3 2023, Apple had a 9.5% share of the PC market, but in the latest figures it's down to 7.7%.
This puts Apple at the bottom of the top five vendors worldwide. Lenovo came top with an annual growth of 2.8% and shipments of approximately 16.5 million units.
HP was second on 0.4% growth and 13.6 million units shipped, while fourth-place Dell was the only other manufacturer to see a decline. Its shipping of 9.8 million PCs was a year over year decline of 4%.
While it sold fewer than the other PC makers, and only a fraction more than Apple, Asus increased its growth by 15.8%. That meant 5.5 million computers sold, and a market share that went from 7.3% to 8.3% year over year.
Apple's 17.5% decline comes despite the company not releasing any new Macs during Q3 in either 2023 or 2024. As it did for Q4 2023, it is now expected to release new models at the end of October 2024.
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
5 Comments
If Apple Insider is going to publish "sky is falling" data like this as fact, it would very helpful, not to mention journalistically responsible, to also publish the past accuracy of the source. (And yes, when market share for a quarter is reported to have supposedly dropped 18.5% YOY, that qualifies as "sky is falling.")
Just consider the following: Canalys data indicates that Apple shipped over ONE MILLION fewer Macs in Q3 2024 vs Q3 2023. That's a drop in shipments of 19%! Which just happens to almost perfectly correlate with the 18.5% drop in market share also reported by Canalys. That's so neat, right? EXCEPT: when Apple reported Q3 2024 earnings back on August 1, Mac revenue for the quarter was UP 2% YOY, which is completely at odds with the Canalys conclusions. And let's remember that Apple is legally bound to report accurate data, while Canalys is not.
@charlesn Both numbers can be true if Apple shipped a smaller number of higher specced and priced units.
Quite frankly Apple has been slow rolling production of some models (iMacs have been bad for longer) all quarter, presumably in advance of the M4 announcement.
If Apple wants to sell more computers they need to hire someone who is really good with design. For laptops in particular. The last good design for laptops was the 2020 MacBook Air M1/Pro. With Ive and Jobs gone, it doesn't seem to be a priority. Its one of the things that has drawn people to Apple products for years. Lose the notch. The feet on the bottom shouldn't be visible from the front. Etc.