Mac sales drop: Apple’s latest hardware not making significant impact
Apple’s latest offerings have made little impact on its Q2 2017 sales, according to a market research firm. The Mac maker launched new hardware back in June, which should’ve lifted the company’s plummeting PC sales. Compared to its likewise struggling competitors, however, the Cupertino-based tech titan is somehow doing just fine.
There were a total of 61.1 million units of PCs shipped across the world between April and June 2017, which is a 4.3 percent drop compared to the second quarter shipments of 2016, according to research and advisory firm Gartner. Last year’s Q2 shipments were estimated to be near 63.9 million. Unfortunately for the PC industry, which is currently in the middle of a five-year plummet, this year’s second quarter sales were the worst in a decade.
“Higher PC prices due to the impact of component shortages for DRAM, solid state drives (SSDs) and LCD panels had a pronounced negative impact on PC demand in the second quarter of 2017,” Gartner’s principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said. “The approach to higher component costs varied by vendor. Some decided to absorb the component price hike without raising the final price of their devices, while other vendors transferred the costs to the end-user price.”
Apple is currently the world’s number four PC vendor. The company shipped an estimated 4.23 million units from April to June of this year, which is down compared to last year’s shipments despite new Mac launches last month. In the second quarter of 2016, Apple shipped about 4.25 million PCs.
HP is currently at the top of the PC mountain with its estimated 12.69 million shipments in Q2 2017, an 3.3 percent increase from last year’s 12.28 million. The Palo Alto-based company holds 20.8 percent of the market. Lenovo plays second fiddle to HP, although they experienced a -8.4 percent crash in growth.
Dell is at third place while Asus occupies the fifth spot. The former shipped 9.55 million PC units in the second quarter of this year while the latter only had 4.03 shipments, which is -10.3 percent down compared to Q2 2016. Acer placed sixth and had the worst drop among the major PC vendors, with its -12.5 percent growth.
Market intelligence provider IDC also has Apple as the fourth best PC vendor of 2017, although it estimates that the iPhone maker enjoyed a 1.7 percent increase in Q2 shipments compared to last year, whereas Gartner saw a -0.4 percent decrease. IDC likewise has HP at the top spot, followed by Lenovo and Dell.
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