14 DAY TRIAL // Macs are still perceived as generally inaccessible, too fancy, too different, and so on and so forth. But that hasn’t stopped Apple from entering the race to become one of the world’s top leaders in computer shipments.
Case in point, this year marks Apple’s entry in the top-five list of vendors alongside longtime leaders Lenovo, HP, and Dell.
Apple makes a victim as it takes the #5 spot
As you’ve probably already noticed, the IDC chart names only the top five vendors by their name. The rest of the pack falls in the “other” category. By nabbing the fifth place, Apple is officially one of the big players, while ASUS has lost that title. Well, not really, but at least until new numbers are obtained.
IDC released this data in the form of a very traditional press release, where it quotes Worldwide PC Trackers analyst Jay Chou as saying that “Although shipments did not decline as much as feared, these preliminary results still show that 3Q14 was one of the weaker calendar third quarters on record in terms of sequential growth.”
“The third quarter has historically been driven by back-to-school sales and renewed business purchasing, which were weaker than normal this year," said Chou says. “The current growth of lower-priced systems, while encouraging in the short run, brings concern for the long term viability of vendors to adequately remain in the PC space.”
IDC thinks price cuts were the key
According to the report, Apple couldn’t have taken the #5 spot without the recent price cuts it has made in the Mac ecosystem. One of the key products to experience a price cut is the MacBook Air, which officially dropped Apple’s entry-level pricing from $999 / €999 to $899 / €899. Another is the iMac, which also shed $100 / €100.
“Apple moved into the number 5 position on a worldwide basis, slightly overtaking ASUS. The company's steady growth, along with recent price cuts and improved demand in mature markets, has helped it to consistently outgrow the market,” IDC notes.
Indeed, the company also targets a slightly older demographic, mainly because the prices are high, but also because the Mac is the machine of choice for many production environments (music, video, design).
Tablets sales could be slowing down
IDC also reveals that PC shipments as a whole grew this year. One of the major reasons was a slowdown in tablet sales. Tablets and traditional PCs are at odds, affecting each other’s share whenever one or the other takes the lead.
Rajani Singh, senior research analyst at Personal Computing, enumerates many other reasons for the uptick as well. These include: “Solid back-to-school sales, a strong performance from key vendors, the continued acceptance of Chromebooks, [and] some commercial uptick from Windows XP to Windows 7 migration.”
Check out the embedded press release below for regional and vendor highlights, or see the charts in the original media release.