“IDC doesn’t like counting iPads among its global PC figures, but it doesn’t seem to like counting Macs either, given its back-to-back quarterly undercounting of Apple’s computer sales,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.
“Yesterday, IDC released numbers indicating that Apple had finally made it into the top five PC makers globally on sales of Macs (not including any iPad sales). According to the firm’s latest numbers, Apple’s Mac sales grew by 8.9 percent in a globally market that overall retracted by 1.7 percent, as long as you compare IDC’s current numbers from the year ago quarter with its latest estimate of Mac sales for calendar Q3,” Dilger reports. “However, if you compare IDC’s current shipping estimates of the PC market against what [IDC] ‘preliminarily’ reported a year ago, global PC shipments are actually down by 3.8 percent, because last year IDC said that Q3 shipments reached 81.6 million. Today it reports that only 79.9 million PCs shipped in the year ago quarter.”
“Additionally, last year IDC ranked Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer and Asus as the top five PC vendors, with fifth place Asus reportedly having shipped 4.2 million PCs. However, Apple itself reported selling 4.6 million Macs that quarter (the company’s fiscal Q4),” Dilger reports. “That means Apple should have edged out Asus a year ago to take the fifth place among PC makers. IDC retroactively adjusted its numbers to report that Apple sold 4.577 million Macs in the year ago quarter, which also would have edged out the estimate it published for Asus last year, when it implied Apple wasn’t even in the top five.
Dilger reports, “Three months ago, IDC similarly lowballed its estimates for Mac shipments.”
Much more in the full article here.