Mac shipments outpace market in Q1

Apple's Macs, such as the MacBook Air, continue to sell well in the U.S. market.

(Credit: CNET)

Apple's Mac business outgrew the overall PC market in the U.S. by a significant margin in the first quarter, according to research from IDC and Gartner released Wednesday.

Check out my colleague Erica Ogg's post for the overall news, which has the PC market as a whole growing by 14.6 percent, but the U.S. market growing by just 3.5 percent. Despite that tepid growth in the U.S., Apple saw its U.S. shipments increase by a margin far greater than the market, as well as any other PC maker in the top 5.

According to Gartner, Mac shipments increased by 32.5 percent to U.S. customers. IDC didn't think Mac growth was quite that strong, pegging the increase at 25.1 percent. The numbers are different because the two companies count PC shipments in slightly different ways, but it really doesn't matter: Apple had a good quarter. Dell was the only other company to post double-digit growth in the U.S., according to both market research companies, with about 15.6 percent growth in the first quarter.

Gartner says that Apple appears to have shown "decent growth" within the professional PC market, which is a little outside of its usual haunts. Apple now has 6.6 percent of the overall U.S. market, according to Gartner, while IDC says Apple's at 6 percent market share. The two firms only release the top 5 in each region at first, and Apple is still pretty far away from cracking the worldwide Top 5.

Apple reports its quarterly earnings next week, and while there have been concerns about the iPod and iPhone businesses heading into that report, any concern about Mac sales can be safely laid to rest.

[Penguinisto]

Nice... very nice.

Good to see that Apple is growing well above and beyond the pack - they've earned it.<br /><br />/P

[sal-magnone]

Not suprising at all

Nice to see good product growing well.

[john55440]

Mac worldwide market share still miniscule

In spite of all the hype, both IDC and Gartner put Apple/Mac's worldwide market share in the Others category, behind at least five other companies.

[ultiweb]

and who really cares?

The machines rock. There is more software available for the Mac than you could ever install and the quality is excellent. If you want a good computing experience you can't go wrong with an Apple computer.

[nb2000nb]

Oh ya...

People always mention security. So here are some results. It would have been better for the author to have measured the past 12 mos. or so but this will suffice: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2008/01/23/download-windows-vista-one-year-vulnerability-report.aspx" target="_newWindow">http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2008/01/23/download-windows-vista-one-year-vulnerability-report.aspx</a>

[epr_epr]

isn't it like the matrix movie?

that everyone carries the same mac book and talk like the same? <br /><br />i mean in a world where everyone will use the same mac so to be cool.<br /><br />good for stevej... though

[MrKleinpaste]

Yes it is, but you have it backwards.

You know the question that drives you...<br /><br />You take the blue pill (PeeCee) and the story ends. You wake in <br />your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. <br /><br />You take the red pill (Mac) and you stay in Wonderland and I <br />show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. <br /><br />Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.<br /><br />I took the red pill 5 years ago and haven't regretted a day of it. <br />Funny part is I manage "blue pills" every day.

[DrtyDogg]

Anyone know the differences,

between IDC and Gartner, they come up with very different numbers. <br />According to the story linked to in the beginning of the article all 5 of the leading computer manufactures posted increases larger than the industry growth. Varying from 66% as the highest growth, to 17% as the lowest growth among the big 5.

[Tom Krazit]

It has something to do with white-box sales

I've asked this question a dozen times over the years, and received a few different answers. But the differences in market share seem to come down to the way each firm estimates the "white-box" market, or the unbranded PCs sold by distributors, resellers, and the like.<br /><br />As for why the raw numbers are so different, good question. But it's important to remember these are estimates, educated guesses at shipment totals, not a thorough counting of each box as it's sold.

[Galaxy5]

So, they've doubled their mkt share in five years

That's pretty damned good.

[kelmon]

Sort Of

The news would be impressive except for 2 issues:<br /><br />1. Apple's market share wasn't much from their low so doubling <br />it wasn't going to be that difficult compared to if they already <br />had a higher share.<br /><br />2. Apple once had a substantial market share but managed to <br />**** it all away. This is recapturing a small amount of the <br />ground they threw away through general incompetence and <br />mismanagement.<br /><br />I honestly do think this is good news but it needs to be <br />tempered a bit.

[mmmtriplem]

This settles PC vs MAC war...

The following link is to an article which fully explains which platform is superior. It is based on many years of user polls and technology specifics.<br /><br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant" target="_newWindow">http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant</a>