Mac Revenue Down 34% Year-Over-Year, But Tim Cook Expects 'Significant' Improvement With M3 Macs

Apple today shared its earnings results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023 (third calendar quarter), and Mac revenue saw a major drop compared to last year.

m3 macbook pro blue
Mac sales came in at $7.6 billion in Q4 2023, down 34 percent from $11.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. Mac revenue for all of 2023 was $29.4 billion, down from $40.2 billion in 2022.

Apple CFO Luca Maestri attributed the drop to challenging market conditions and challenging compares to last year's Mac lineup. Because of supply chain issues during the June 2022 quarter, Mac sales spiked in the September 2022 quarter, which did not happen this year. Apple also updated the MacBook Air in June 2023 rather than September, which impacted September quarter sales compared to last year.

Apple did release new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Macs in late October, but sales of those devices will be reflected in the December quarter. Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that he expects Mac performance to improve over the holidays.

"I think the Mac is going to have a significantly better quarter in the December quarter," said Cook. "We've got the M3, we've got the new products, and we don't have the compare phenomenon on a year-over-year basis," Cook said.

Apple began allowing customers to purchase the new M3 Macs on Monday, with shipments to begin arriving next week. Apple appears to have plenty of supply of the new models, so there should be no supply constraints during the upcoming holidays.

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Top Rated Comments

daneoni Avatar
22 months ago
Its also the pricing. I know inflation exists but still, these things are becoming somewhat pricey...especially when you start upgrading RAM and storage.

Entry-level pricing is meaningless when you have Macs shipping with the same amount of RAM as an iPhone...in 2023.

Its kinda telling that after the M3 updates were announced, pretty much all the M2 MBPs in the refurb store that i'd seen earlier had disappeared. Buyers likely opted for those instead.

With Apple Silicon, Mac upgrades may become similar to iPad upgrades unlike the Intel era. You buy a new one if the old one dies or is no longer getting updates. And then sell a kidney to pay for it.
Score: 56 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ralph_sws Avatar
22 months ago
Not with these RAM and SSD prices.
Score: 48 Votes (Like | Disagree)
abatabia Avatar
22 months ago
The M1 series were just too good.
Score: 44 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Tuck_ Avatar
22 months ago
I'm skeptical. The prices are very high, the upsells are aggressive and I'm not sure the value proposition is strong enough because of that.

They'll do well, obviously. But enough to stop the downtrend? Not sure about that.
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mazda 3s Avatar
22 months ago
I have a 14-inch base MacBook Pro with M1 Pro/16GB/512GB.

I would be inclined to upgrade, but the storage and RAM upgrades are ridiculously priced. I get it, everything is integrated on-chip, but it’s still a tough pill to swallow.

I added a 1TB Crucial PCIe 4.0 SSD to my Intel NUC media server for around $50 shipped from Amazon. Apple’s pricing for upgrades just makes my head spin.
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)
andrewxgx Avatar
22 months ago
yea, i'm sure people are lining up to buy M3 Pro downgrade
Score: 38 Votes (Like | Disagree)