Gartner, a research firm, has released personal computer shipment data for Q3 of 2012, showing that the market struggled throughout the quarter. Even Apple, who has been booming in this regard for years now, saw a year-over-year unit decline of 6.1% in the US. The overall unit shipments decreased 13.8% in the quarter.
Even though unit shipments went down, Apple’s share of the US market rose to 13.6% due in part by the back-to-school market. Given their performance for the quarter, Apple managed to hold onto their third place ranking- ahead of Lenovo and behind HP and Dell. This time last year, Apple held 12.5% of the market.
Gartner did not calculate Apple’s share for the worldwide market, as Apple doesn’t even rank in the top five worldwide vendors. That said, PC shipments declined 8.3% year-over-year in the worldwide market.
Backing up these numbers, IDC has released their estimates for this quarter. They claim that Apple holds 12.5% of the PC market, with a 7% unit shipment decline. The IDC report also claims that the overall US PC market shrank by 12.4%.
In short, for Q3 of 2012, Apple gained ground because they their PC shipments shrunk the least. I think this market contraction is largely due to the surge of tablets. And we all know that the iPad is the number one selling tablet, at least here in the States.
Chart courtesy of Gartner.
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TAGS: q3 2012
