Apple's Share of U.S. PC Shipments Rises to 12% in 2Q 2012

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 2Q12 us
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.

gartner 2Q12 us trend
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.

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Top Rated Comments

sebi247 Avatar
167 months ago
???? So Apple sold 1910 macs? Thats not a lot to shout about is it.
x1000

(Thousands of Units)
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CodexMonkey Avatar
167 months ago
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 don’t work as well as they should and, if something does not work as well as it should, then it could be free - it’s still no use.

Every Mac I’ve 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 I’ve bought a new computer it’s been a Mac - not because I’m 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, won’t ever get it - because the man’s an idiot and a liability to Microsoft’s 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.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
madrag Avatar
167 months ago
Release a new iMac and a new Mac Pro and those numbers will rise.

I dare you Apple.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
KnightWRX Avatar
167 months ago
God, I miss the VOTE DOWN button. :(

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 ?
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Yvan256 Avatar
167 months ago
???? So Apple sold 1910 macs? Thats not a lot to shout about is it.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)
1910 x 1000 = 1910000 computers.

That's for one quarter, so more or less 90 days.

1910000 / 90 = 21222 computers per day, or 884 computers per hour, or 14 computers every minute, or about one Mac sold every four seconds.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Renzatic Avatar
167 months ago
God, I miss the VOTE DOWN button. :(
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.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)