Within the next three weeks, Apple will publish its earnings report for the latest holiday quarter.
Of course, the majority of ‘experts’ will occupy themselves mainly with iPhone sales – which is not surprising given that the bulk of Apple’s revenue has been produced by this device for quite some time.
Disregarding the iPhone, however, the portrait of Apple’s sales for other products in its range is less rosy. Particularly taking into account that in recent years Mac sales have been rather lacklustre.
Ahead of the company’s official earnings report, MacRumors and IDS recently published statistics showing that on an annual basis Mac sales increased marginally during this quarter. They expect sales to come in at between 5.4 million and 5.7 million units, compared to the 5.3 million of the 2016 holiday quarter.
Looking at the whole of 2017 IDC expects Mac sales to reach 19.6 million, or 5% more than in 2016. This will make Apple the fourth biggest PC producer on earth, although only with a 7.6% market share. The top three manufacturers are HP, Lenovo and Dell.
During 2017, Apple upgraded a couple of its Mac models, with the most notable release having been the totally new iMac Pro which was launched last month.
According to the statistics, Apple and HP were the only two manufacturers to show any notable growth in PC sales between Q4, 2016 and Q4, 2017. Lenovo experienced no growth, and Dell’s growth was a mere 0.7%. Asus had a disastrous year with sales dropping by 11.2%.
Comparing the whole of 2017 to 2016, HP recorded an increase of 8.2% in shipments, compared to Apple’s 5.9% and Dell’s 1.7%. Here also ASUS didn’t do well at all, with a drop of 10.6% in its PC sales.