You can't read much into Mac sales shipment data, but IDC keeps trying

In a comparison between 2024 and 2025, IDC claims that Apple's Mac had the least sales growth of all PC vendors. While that may be true, the report lacks context.

Market research firm IDC has now been running for over 60 years, yet at times its reports are more like guesswork. In all fairness, they practically have to be since it's now just over seven years since Apple reported sales volumes by unit.

Prior to that, Apple reported actual sales while most firms revealed the number of devices shipped to stores and inventory. Apple figures were dead-on, but now IDC has to use its sampling methodology for all of its research.

The latest example of that, though, is another one where context is missing — and context is crucial. According to IDC, Apple's Mac sales grew 0.2% between Q4 2024 and Q4 2025.

IDC lists five separate firms and then categorizes every other company under "Others." Apple grew less than the whole of the Others category.

Only, this is not a true like for like, year over year comparison in anything other than the timeframe. Just in time for the 2024 holiday quarter, Apple launched a new MacBook Pro with the M4 Max and M4 Pro processors.

For the holiday quarter of 2025, Apple did launch a MacBook Pro, but this time with just the M5, and no Pro or Max version.

This is significant because while most PC vendors grow by selling lower-cost hardware, Apple does not. Its MacBook Pros using the Pro and Max processors are high-cost devices, and have consistently been the main force behind sales volume increases and decreases.

Just as with the iPhone, where the higher-specification models are in demand, Apple profits from the higher margins it makes on its devices.

If the numbers are correct — and the further we get from Apple's reporting, the less likely that is — then the story is that Apple did startlingly well. With no new device in sales-driving device in the last calendar quarter of 2025, it still matched and fractionally exceeded its shipments from the year before, one quarter full of MacBook Pro sales with Pro and Max processors.

IDC's report concentrates mostly on what it predicts is going to happen in 2026, based on these results. That does include expected changes like the rising cost of components such as memory.

But aside from obvious points such as how this may lead to price rises, the predictions of the future are based on shaky data about the past lacking context about what got released in the quarter, and what did not. And, it doesn't address that the desired MacBook Pro is launching soon at all.

Apple will not correct IDC and it will not reveal its Mac sales volumes by unit. Tim Cook has said in the past to not rely on sources like this.

But on January 29, 2026, it will report earnings that are expected to be its best yet.