Apple Silicon Mac sales climb as PC industry slows

Apple Silicon appears to be changing the rules, setting new expectations in PC sales as IDC confirms Mac sales have increased even as the industry slows down.

Steady signs of change

The industry hasn’t really slowed down. What it has done is changed.

People don’t need PCs the same way. Or, to be more precise, many of the tasks we once used them for can now be transacted on other devices, which are selling in vast quantities.

Smartphones are more than computer enough for some of the things we once used PCs for. Tablets – especially iPads – are becoming increasingly effective alternative platforms for some use, and the Mac?

The Mac has never been better and now operates at the top of the industry, delivering impressive performance per watt that no other vendor can match.

The IDC data says Mac shipments continued to rise year-on-year in Q1 2022.

Mac sales up 4.3% annually

Apple’s Mac sales climbed 4.3% year on year on Q1 2021, giving it an 8.9% share of the PC market. At the same time, PC shipments overall fell 5.1% year on year from 84.8 million to 80.5 million. Apple sold 7.2 million.

That information also shows that while the PC industry has seen two years of double-digit growth as we continue to navigate the pandemic, it contracted in the first quarter.

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The top 4:

• Lenovo, 18.3 million sales in Q1 22, 22.7% of market. Down 9.2%.
• HP, 15.8 million sales in Q1 22, 19.7% of market. Down 17.8%.
• Dell, 13.7 million sales in Q1 22, 17.1% of market. Up 6.1%.
• Apple, 7.2 million sales in Q1 22, 8.1% of market. Up 4.3%.

This still leaves millions of sales before Apple can comfortably slip up to third place, but it’s an impressive result all the same. Apple also achieved this while managing global challenges in component supply. That latter problem is certainly worth monitoring, as I imagine it will disrupt the business of smaller PC makers most.

What the analysts said

“The focus shouldn’t be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected. The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges,” said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers.

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