“Even though CEO Tim Cook said there were plenty of reasons (5) for the decline of Mac growth, including iMac constraints, Mac sales for the year are heading toward ‘flat,” Seth Weintraub reports for 9to5Mac.

“While not making enough iMacs for Christmas shopping was a significant and uncharacteristic operational misstep, it doesn’t account for the significant drop in Mac sales overall year-over-year and even sequentially,” Weintraub reports. “iMacs and desktops in general have been a declining component of the Mac market as MacBooks take over the space, so even a significant drop in iMac sales wouldn’t account for a 20-percent drop year-over-year and sequentially.”

Weintraub reports, “Without a major hardware change or drastic price cuts, it is hard to imagine Apple having another 5 million Mac quarter. It would seem that, like iPods a few years ago, Macs have peaked… The good news is that Apple is cannibalizing its own Mac growth (as well as overall PC growth) with its own high-margin iPads—and lots of them.”

Much more, including some interesting graphs, in the full article here.