Apple saw its U.S. PC marketshare decline to 10.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014, down from 11.5 percent in the year-ago quarter, according to new data released from Gartner. With 1.6 million shipments, it trailed behind HP, Dell, and Lenovo, ranking fourth for the first time in several years.
Lenovo saw the most significant growth at 20.3 percent, while HP and Dell also saw high growth rates of 15.5 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively. Toshiba, with just over a million shipments, also saw growth of 18.5 percent.
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"The consumer PC market also started picking up in the U.S. The availability of affordable, thin and light notebooks have drawn consumers' attention," Ms. Kitagawa said. "Touch enable devices are also widely available with decreasing price premiums compared to a year ago. The price premium is low enough for mainstream consumers to spend the extra money for the additional functionalities,
such as touch."Four of the top five vendors in the U.S. market experienced double-digit growth. HP was the market leader, accounting for 27.7 percent of PC shipments.
Overall, U.S. PC shipments totaled 15.9 million, up 7.4 percent year over year, while worldwide PC shipments saw flat growth compared to the year-ago quarter. Shipments totaled 75.8 million units, a 0.1 increase. Though worldwide PC shipments have ceased to decline in 2Q14, interest in low-cost tablets continues to eat into the traditional PC market.
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IDC has also released its own estimates of PC shipments for the second quarter of 2014, painting a similar picture. IDC puts Apple's shipments at 1.6 million and its market share at 10 percent, down from 10.9 percent, a 1.7 percent decline. IDC's numbers also rank HP, Dell, and Lenovo as the top three vendors in the United States, with all three seeing growth of 15.6, 12.9, and 24.7 percent, respectively.
Unlike Gartner, IDC suggests worldwide PC sales totaled just 74.4 million, a year-over-year decline of 1.7 percent, with U.S. sales up 6.9 percent.
IDC and Gartner did not list Apple's worldwide market share for the quarter, as usual, because the company does not rank among the top five vendors on a worldwide basis. Apple's U.S. decline comes even as the company dropped the prices on two of its flagship products in 2014 -- both the MacBook Air and the iMac saw price drops, with the former gaining a small spec boost and the latter seeing the introduction of a new low-cost version.
Top Rated Comments
If this was "Apple passes Lenovo" you'd say "not surprising, quality and quantity"
What a joke
Just as clear though is that Apple has taken a very casual attitude towards fulfilling customer needs and wants. Consider the holes in the product lineup;
There is no modern mini with current specs.
There are no user friendly towers at all, mini-tower, mid-tower or full tower.
There are no OSX tables or convertibles.
Apple cannot make one expensive, specialized computer, essentially one type of AIO (in two sizes), an apparently ignored laptop-in-a-box, and two, partially overlapping lines of laptops and claim to be in the computer business.
There are a lot of great PCs out there at less than $1000 that are more feature-rich and future proof than Macs are. Sure, the readers here prefer Mac but there are a bunch of Windows fans across the world that Apple has to be competitive to.
Of course, everything Apple releases is quality. Such as the iPad 3, now that's a quality product, well engineered, well designed, no heat problems, and didn't get obsolete in just 6 months. It was not rushed... at all.
Quality
Here lies my issue with Apple's current computer line, if Apple does not make a computer that fits your needs, you need to fit your needs to Apples offerings. While Apple's line up fits a fairly wide spectrum, there are gaps. I consider myself as falling into those gaps.
Currently Apple makes no computer that fits what I want. Mini: not powerful enough, iMac: utterly opposed to all-in-one format, MacBookPro: no anti-glare option, MacPro: too limited and too costly. Sure I could just suck it up and deal with the aspects I dislike, or I can continue too hang on for dear life to the machines I obtained when they built products I didn't have to compromise what I wanted.
Still, it is far more interesting of a machine than anything Apple currently has. Which really makes me sad, because for the first time in a LONG time, I am hesitant to recommend an Apple computer to my friends.
Say what you will about Windows 8.1, it is coming along pretty nicely - I was shocked at how much lower maintenance it was compared to Windows Vista (last version of Windows I had the displeasure of using, yuck).
I really enjoy the SP3, and all of my friends and family are enthralled with it (though it has its issues).
I have started hearing words like 'boring' thrown around when describing Macs these days, which is ... not supposed to happen!
C'mon Apple, we are starting to believe that the media is right, without Steve at the helm, you've lost your way once more.