“A little while back, research firm IDC reported that Apple had lost market share in the personal computer market last quarter. On the company’s July 26 earnings call, management gave figures that appear to corroborate that report,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “According to Apple CFO Luca Maestri, the Mac maker shipped just 4.3 million Macs during its fiscal third quarter, a decline of 10.42% from the year prior… it’s obvious that Apple lost unit share.”
“It would seem that the company’s introduction of the updated 12-inch MacBook back in April wasn’t enough to give overall Mac sales a boost,” Eassa writes. “It has been a long time since Apple put out meaningful refreshes of either its higher-end MacBook Pro or its more mainstream MacBook Air lineup.”
The good news for Apple, though, is that once it finally rolls out substantially improved Macs, it should be in a good position to both regain lost share and encourage its current installed base (which Maestri says grew to ‘a new all-time high at the end of the June quarter’) to ditch their old Macs for newer, better ones,” Eassa writes. “Maestri told investors that the company ended the prior quarter with Mac channel inventories below the company’s ‘four-week to five-week target range.’ The fact that the company managed channel inventory levels so lean (Apple probably could have shipped more Macs during the quarter while still maintaining healthy channel inventory levels) seems to suggest that new Macs will arrive fairly shortly.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote yesterday: “New Macs, please. There is significant pent-up Mac demand out here. Perhaps, that (some nice high-margin Mac outperformance) is what Apple’s banking on for the holiday quarter?”
SEE ALSO:
Apple prepping new MacBook Air with USB-C, reports claim – July 27, 2016
What’s happening with Apple’s Macintosh? – July 14, 2016
Sales suffer as Apple neglects the Mac – July 12, 2016
Apple’s Mac sales fall, economies shudder – July 12, 2016
IDC, Gartner: Apple’s Mac no longer bucking PC industry’s sales slide – July 12, 2016
