“Last quarter was a terrible for most personal computer makers,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “With sales down 8%-9% across the board, yearly PC shipments fell worldwide for the first time since the 2001 recession according to Gartner and IDC, which attributed the dismal results variously to the economic slowdown, a pause in advance of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 and the fickleness of consumers who would rather spend their money these days on smartphones and tablets than on traditional PCs.”
“None of which explains why 44 of the 64 Apple (AAPL) analysts we polled in advance of Thursday’s earnings report believe that Mac sales actually grew in the quarter that ended Sept. 29 — both sequentially (i.e. from the previous quarter) and year over year,” P.E.D. reports. “That would mark the 26th straight quarter that the Mac’s growth has outpaced the rest of the industry.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Joe Architect” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]