Research firm Gartner today released its preliminary personal computer shipment data for the second quarter of 2012, offering up a picture of market performance during the quarter. While Apple experienced only small year-over-year unit growth of 4.3% in the United States, the company was the only one of the top five vendors to see year-over-year growth and the company once again outperformed the overall industry and its 5.7% decline.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)
Apple's share of the U.S. market rose to 12.0% for the quarter after two straight quarters of decline due to the company's seasonality. The figure, which allowed Apple to consolidate its hold on the third position in the U.S. market behind HP and Dell, marked Apple's second best performance in recent years following a 12.9% share in the third quarter of 2011. The third quarter, which includes back-to-school purchases in many of Apple's strongest markets, is typically its best-performing quarter.
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-2Q12 (Gartner)
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 experienced a 0.1% year-over-year decline on a worldwide basis, with strong growth from Asus and Lenovo being offset by declines from HP and Dell.
Update: IDC has released its own estimates for the quarter, pegging Apple at a 1.1% year-over-year decline in U.S. shipments and an 11.4% share of that market. IDC estimated that Lenovo was able to enter the top five on the strength of a 6.1% year-over-year gain, but the overall U.S. market was much weaker than expected in registering a 10.6% drop.
Wednesday April 30, 2025 3:59 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is preparing to launch a dramatically thinner iPhone this September, and if recent leaks are anything to go by, the so-called iPhone 17 Air could boast one of the most radical design shifts in recent years.
iPhone 17 Air dummy model alongside iPhone 16 Pro (credit: AppleTrack)
At just 5.5mm thick (excluding a slightly raised camera bump), the 6.6-inch iPhone 17 Air is expected to become ...
Apple may have canceled the super scratch resistant anti-reflective display coating that it planned to use for the iPhone 17 Pro models, according to a source with reliable information that spoke to MacRumors.
Last spring, Weibo leaker Instant Digital suggested Apple was working on a new anti-reflective display layer that was more scratch resistant than the Ceramic Shield. We haven't heard...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 1:30 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
Apple has completed Engineering Validation Testing (EVT) for at least one iPhone 17 model, according to a paywalled preview of an upcoming DigiTimes report.
iPhone 17 Air mockup based on rumored design
The EVT stage involves Apple testing iPhone 17 prototypes to ensure the hardware works as expected. There are still DVT (Design Validation Test) and PVT (Production Validation Test) stages to...
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too.
2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3
Apple didn't update the...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 3:36 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
All upcoming iPhone 17 models will come equipped with 12GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence, according to the Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station.
The claim from the Chinese leaker, who has sources within Apple's supply chain, comes a few days after industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max will all be equipped with 12GB of RAM.
...
Wednesday April 30, 2025 4:01 pm PDT by Juli Clover
In a victory for Epic Games, Apple was today found to be in violation of a 2021 injunction that required it to allow developers to direct customers to third-party purchase options on the web using in-app links.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has been handling the Apple vs. Epic Games dispute for the last five years, said that Apple is in "willful violation" of the injunction she issued to ...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 7:00 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone 18 lineup will introduce a major leap in memory performance, according to new information shared today by Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station. Apple is reportedly planning to equip the 2026 models with a high-capacity six-channel LPDDR5X memory configuration, significantly upping the memory bandwidth for future AI features and multitasking.
Expanding the memory bandwidth...
Everyone who says that Macs are overpriced needs to take a good long look at these figures. Some of the cheaper alternatives (hardware and/or windows software) simply dont work as well as they should and, if something does not work as well as it should, then it could be free - its still no use.
Every Mac Ive bought since 1986 has made my eyes water price-wise (esp. when comparing it to cheaper alternatives available at the time) and yet every time Ive bought a new computer its been a Mac - not because Im a fan-boy (I am) but because it always does what I want it to do, and often more - from the moment I get it out of the box until long after I sell it. I used a PC just last week for a few hours. The UI was ugly, it crashed twice, it kept asking me stupid questions and then could not find my digital camera without a long, drawn out installation session.
The day Ballmer, Dell and various other people get their heads around the fact that lots and lots and lots of people, even in hard times, will pay that little bit more in return for almost 100% customer satisfaction, is the day the trend shown in this graph will be reversed.
Ballmer, however, wont ever get it - because the mans an idiot and a liability to Microsofts legacy.
Steve got it. Jony gets it. Bob (who will be missed) gets it. Phil gets it.
So yeah, we go out with our hard earned burning our wallets - and we get it.
Why ? If they did update the iMac and Mac Pro, they would probably get quite a few more sales, which is what the poster was hinting at. Why would you down vote him ?
Why not explain to us why you don't agree instead of cowardly down vote ?
I'm glad it's gone. Now you won't have perfectly reasonable posts being downvoted to hell and back simply because someone said something some other guy didn't like.
Such as "Android is a perfectly good platform, and competes quite well with iOS these days".
That's a true statement, but just mentioning Android in a positive light is enough to get people all riled up. If I said that within the first two pages of a thread, I would've been sporting a -15 for no other reason other than NUH UH UR DUM! I USE APPLE STUFF BECAUSE INNOVATION AND STEVE JOBS AND STUFF ITS THE BESTEST EVER -1".
Now if you disagree with something someone says, you have to make a post to air your disagreement. You can't just snipe at people passive aggressively anymore.
...though admittedly, this could end up being a double edged sword.
