Research firm Gartner today released its preliminary personal computer shipment data for the fourth quarter of 2011, offering up a picture of market performance during the quarter. With year-over-year unit growth of over 20%, Apple was the only one of the top five U.S. vendors to see an increase in shipments in an overall market that shrank by nearly 6%.
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-4Q11 (Gartner)
Apple's share dipped from 12.9% in the third quarter, which is routinely the company's strongest quarter due to a heavy presence in education. But the performance marks a distinct improvement over Apple's 9.0% share in the year-ago quarter and continues a long-term trend of increasing market share.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q11 (Thousands of Units)
As usual, Gartner did not cover Apple's worldwide market share for the quarter, as the company does not rank among the top five vendors on a worldwide basis. PC shipments shrank 1.4% year-over-year on a worldwide basis, with strong growth from Lenovo and Asus being offset by declines from HP and Acer.
Update: IDC has also released its numbers for the fourth quarter of 2011, yielding results similar to Gartner's. As is typical, IDC pegged Apple's market share slightly lower than in Gartner's data, with IDC showing Apple with 10.92% of the U.S. market on 18% year-over-year growth.
IDC also released numbers for full-year 2011, showing Apple in third place in the U.S. market at 10.73%, up from 8.83% in 2010. Apple's full-year growth of 16.41% easily outpaced the other top-five manufacturers in an overall U.S. market that declined by nearly 5% from 2010.
Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by Juli Clover
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing.
Test Settings
I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
Thursday October 23, 2025 3:55 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is one of several tech companies that will contribute to the construction of U.S. President Donald Trump's 90,000-square-foot ballroom, reports CNN.
Construction began on the ballroom this week, and the White House's east wing was torn down. Trump claims that the ballroom will cost $350 million, and that it will be privately funded through donations. The cost has already increased $150 ...
Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 could feature 50% more memory than its predecessor, according to Korea's The Bell.
With its latest iPhone lineup, the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max feature 12GB of memory. This is a significant increase of 4GB more their predecessors, largely driven by the demands of on-device artificial intelligence processing.
The iPhone 17 is the only new...
In July, Apple sued well-known YouTuber Jon Prosser and his acquaintance Michael Ramacciotti over alleged theft of the company's trade secrets, after Prosser leaked some iOS 26 details in videos uploaded to his YouTube channel Front Page Tech. If you are not caught up on the lawsuit, read our initial coverage to learn more.
Earlier this week, Prosser told The Verge he has "been in active...
Apple's new iPhone lineup launched in the fall of 2027 will be called the "iPhone 20" models, rather than the "iPhone 19," according to research firm Omdia.
Speaking at a conference in Seoul (via ETNews), Omdia Chief Researcher Heo Moo-yeol corroborated rumors that Apple plans to move the launch of its standard iPhone to the first half of the year and provided some additional clarity about...
Friday October 24, 2025 7:18 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
At least some new iPhone models launching next year may support full 5G satellite internet, according to a report this week from The Information.
"Apple plans to add support in upcoming iPhones as early as next year for 5G networks that aren't tethered to Earth's surface, which includes satellites," the report said. "That would give the iPhone full internet access over satellite," it added.
...
The Windows 10 end-of-support deadline is driving the largest coordinated PC replacement cycle in years across the industry, and Apple is emerging as one of the main beneficiaries as Mac shipments accelerate.
Counterpoint Research this week reported that nearly 40% of the global installed PC base was still running Windows 10 ahead of the October 2025 cutoff, triggering early fleet renewals...
With year-over-year unit growth of over 20%, Apple was the only one of the top five U.S. vendors to see an increase in shipments in an overall market that shrank by nearly 6%.
I guess that helps explain why CES 2012 looks an awful lot like MacWorld 2008........
The price of the Macbook pro is beyond a joke now.
having owned 2 15" pros im seriously thinking of moving away as upgrading is way to expensive.
When a laptop costs over £2000 with a half assed GPU inside and upgrades which have to be bought with blood diamonds your market share is going to drop.
Time apple started charging average prices for average spec laptops or actually spec them up to what they are trying to charge.
Goes to show that some people only see what supports their own opinion. :)
Apple is the only one of the top 5 vendors to NOT be going backwards year over year.
Just because it has a black border around the screen and black keys doesn't make it an exact copy...
Edit: Wow at all the people who disliked this post and think Apple was the first with that design...
Honestly, because they try to make it as close as possible with out getting slammed with some lawsuit.
I will say this again and again, every company copies ideas from one another. Humans do it do other humans and it's pretty clear that's the way things have been and the way things are.
Apple has stolen ideas (Android notifications for one) and I do acknowledge that. But I don't believe they do it as much or as direct (physical designs) as companies are doing it to Apple today.
Companies usually try to mimic Apple's design (both software and hardware) but often just usually make a worse product. When apple does steal an idea (usually never design) they tend to polish and perfect the idea that the original company "never" could have done.
Is Apple the only company that innovates or comes up with original ideas that consumers like? Of course not! However, there is trend gaining momentum that seems to be the moto, "let Apple do most of the innovation and we'll pick off that."
Begin the downranking or bashing of this fanboy, which I'm not, but it is so blaten these days, I can't believe people try to even deny it.
The impressive part is the growth (or decline) column. It is humorous, all the buzz going to the "ultra-portable" laptops this year, as if it were something new.
While the ultra-portables want to kick Apple's MBA to the curb (kerb, in some other English-speaking countries), the analysts think they will only make about a 10% inroad, combined. Why, you might ask? They will cost as much as the MBA or up to 40% more. Some will be thinner than the MBA, but since that's the standard, you also can't charge more. If Apple refreshes the MBA early in this year, as expected, they could blow the wannabes out of the water with something like a retina display, or adding Siri, or some other compelling "next big thing." ...OR a combination of those things.
I'm tickled to see that it's still Apple's ball game and the wannabes are still in a catch-up mode.
