Mac shipments are down in Q3 2019
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Apple remains the number 4 PC vendor
What you need to know
- A report suggests Apple's Mac shipments are down in Q3 of 2019.
- There has been a 3.7% drop in shipments year on year according to estimates by Gartner.
- The PC market as a whole is up by 1.1% Year-on-year.
A report published by Gartner via MacRumors states that according to estimates, Mac shipments were down in Q3 of 2019, whilst the PC market as a whole grew.
According to the report:
During the quarter, Apple shipped an estimated 5.1 million Macs, down from 5.3 million in the third quarter of 2018, marking a 3.7 percent drop in shipments. Apple's marketshare also declined slightly, dropping from 7.9 percent to 7.5 percent.
If the estimates are correct, it would mean that Apple remains the fourth most popular PC vendor, behind Lenovo, HP and Dell but ahead of Acer and Asus. The number one vendor Lenovo shipped 16.8 million computers and holds nearly a quarter of the market share. A similar IDC report suggests that Apple's Mac shimpents may have declined even further to 5 million, not 5.1.
The drop in Mac sales comes amid slight growth for the overall worldwide PC market. A total of 68.1 million PCs were shipped during the quarter, a 1.1 percent increase from the third quarter of 2018.
Apple saw slight growth in Mac shipments in the United States in Q3 2019. Apple shipped a total of 2.186 million Macs during the quarter, up from 2.182 during the third quarter of 2018, a 0.2 percent increase.
The news comes ahead of Apple's official earnings call on October 30, and amidst rumors of an October event where Apple is purportedly planning to release a 16-inch MacBook Pro which will lay to rest the controversial butterfly mechanism keyboard. Apple's latest Mac Pro (the one that looks like a cheese grater) is slated for an autum release according to Apple's website, however we are still waiting for the product to be made available.
It may come as a blow that Apple has not been able to take advantage of the growth in the PC market in Q3, however given that the summer has been swirling with rumors of a new MacBook, and that the Mac Pro is yet to be released this year, there's certainly no need to overreact to these reports.