Apple's worldwide Mac shipments were slightly up in the first quarter of 2022, according to new PC shipping estimates shared this afternoon by Gartner. Apple shipped an estimated 7 million Macs during the quarter, up from 6.5 million in the year-ago quarter, marking 8.6 percent growth.
Apple was the number four vendor during the quarter, a position that it has held for some time. Market share was at 9 percent, up from 7.7 percent in Q1 2021. The overall PC market was more unstable, and several vendors saw a decrease in shipments.
Lenovo continued to be the number one PC vendor in Q1 2022 with 18.3 million PCs shipped, but saw a 12.6 percent decline in the number of shipments. HP, the number two vendor, saw a 17.8 percent decline and shipped 15.9 million PCs. Dell came in at number three with 13.7 million PCs shipped and five percent growth, while ASUS and Acer were the number five and six vendors.
Overall, there were 77.5 million PCs shipped in the first quarter of 2022, down 7.3 percent from the 83.6 million shipped in the first quarter of 2021. Gartner says that overall PC shipment numbers were impacted by a decline in Chromebook sales in the educational market.
In the United States, Apple was the number four vendor with 2.8 million Macs shipped, up from 2.3 million in the year-ago quarter, marking impressive growth of 18.6 percent. Apple's U.S. market share came in at 14.5 percent, up from 10.2 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Dell, HP, and Lenovo all shipped more PC units than Apple in the U.S., with shipments of 5.1 million, 4.3 million, and 3.3 million, respectively.
Apple has seen success with its M1-based Macs, most recently introducing the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro models in October 2021 and the M1 Max and M1 Ultra Mac Studio models in March. Apple is close to converting its entire Mac line to Apple silicon powered machines, with just the Mac mini and the Mac Pro continuing to use Intel chips.
IDC also released its own shipping estimates this morning, noting similar growth for Apple. According to IDC, Apple shipped an estimated 7.2 million Macs, up from an estimated 6.9 million in the year-ago quarter.
Data shared by Gartner and IDC is estimated and not reflective of Apple's actual sales, and the numbers can fluctuate quite a bit over time. Estimated data used to be able to be confirmed when Apple provided quarterly earnings results with actual Mac sales information, but Apple no longer breaks out unit sales for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, making it impossible to determine exact sales numbers.
