“According to preliminary data by research firms IDC and Gartner, Apple’s Mac line of personal computers continues to buck the overall decline in PC sales, increasing market share in the process,” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “The purported slowdown in China that was supposed to be so devastating to Apple was nowhere to be seen.”
“My key thesis concerning the free upgrade offered by Microsoft to Windows 10 was that this would tend to suppress sales of new PCs by Windows OEMs,” Hibben writes. “There continues to be the expectation (promoted by Intel, mainly) that new hardware would stimulate sales in Q4. Perhaps, but I doubt it. According to Microsoft, about 110 million have upgraded to Windows 10, leaving a huge remaining pool of users (over a billion) that haven’t upgraded but could. I expect Windows 10 adoption to be rapid, and OEM sales to continue to decline.”
“Except for Apple,” Hibben writes. “Apple has had a policy of free Mac OS X upgrades for some time, and as the only vendor of Mac hardware, doesn’t have to worry about the effect of the upgrade policy. Chances are that sales will be basically flat compared to calendar 2014 Q3 sales of 5.52 million units. This is not awe-inspiring performance, except in the context of the continuing implosion in PC sales, which the Win10 upgrade has effectively accelerated. According to IDC, the y/y decline in PC unit sales was 10.8%, according to Gartner, it was 7.7%. PC sales in the U.S. were basically flat y/y, the research firms agree, while Mac sales grew in the U.S., although the firms don’t agree by how much. IDC says U.S. Mac sales grew by 1.6%, Gartner says they grew by 7.3%.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Indomitable.
SEE ALSO:
Gartner: Apple Mac keeps gaining share as Windows PC sales continue decline – October 8, 2015
Apple Macs and iOS devices now outselling Windows PCs annually – July 23, 2015