Mac Shipments Decline Over 11 Percent in Q3, Apple Only Top 5 Vendor to 'Underperform': IDC

While Apple is anticipated to refresh its Mac lineup with the launch of new MacBook models in the coming days, a new report has shown that the company underperformed in the overall PC market, seeing a dip in Mac shipments. The report, which has been released by International Data Corporation (IDC), claims that the Cupertino giant finished the third quarter of 2018 in the fifth place with over 11 percent decline in the shipments of Mac machines. The overall PC market worldwide reached 67.4 million units during the quarter, showing a 0.9 percent decline year-over-year.

The data released by IDC shows that particularly Apple shipped 4.7 million Mac units during the third quarter, declining 11.6 percent compared to the Mac shipments during the same quarter last year. With this fall, the Mac maker has emerged as the fifth player in the PC market globally, with Lenovo leading the market, followed by HP, Dell, and Acer. IDC considers that Apple was the only player in the top five vendors "to underperform the overall market."

IDC's report comes in the midst of speculations around the launch of the new Mac machines, since it's been a while when Apple refreshed its computing family. The company is also long anticipated to launch a new affordable MacBook model that could emerge as the successor to the existing MacBook Air 13" that was launched in 2017 with minor hardware-level tweaks. Apart from the new MacBook model, the new Mac lineup is expected to include a Mac mini and iMac.

Similar to the data provided by IDC, Gartner in a separate report for the third quarter mentioned that Apple shipped 4.9 million Mac units, a decline of 8.5 percent over the 5.4 million units shipped in the same quarter last year. Gartner, however, noted that Apple continued to surpass Acer and Asus, though the overall PC market is claimed to have Lenovo as the leader, followed by HP.

IDC's report additionally shows that while the PC market in the US reached the mark of 17.2 million shipments in the third quarter, India also saw a "significant sequential increase in sell-in" thanks to the preparations for the forthcoming Diwali season. In Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the fall in the supply of components "slightly dampened" the overall growth despite higher demand from the commercial space, whereas Japan witnessed an acceleration in the commercial space and is expected to carry the growth into 2019 majorly due to the increase in shift of users towards Windows 10 machines. Lastly, it was found that the demand for ultraslim PCs "fuelled consumer and SMB shipments" in China, though the government segment in the country benefited from Windows 10 renewals.

"Q3 came in better than expected," said Jay Chou, Research Manager, IDC, in a press statement. "But the outlook remains uncertain as we head into the holiday season, when volume will be boosted by many consumer-oriented promotions in entry-level SKUs. AMD supply could help with processor demand somewhat, but it will also take time for OEMs to spec in more models."