Gartner and IDC: Mac Grew in March-Q Despite PC Shrinkage

Image via Apple

12 APRIL 2022 - You know… I miss when Apple would offer unit numbers. I understand why they don’t anymore. They want analysts and investors to grok the fullness of what the company’s doing - not live and die by the number of iPhones and iPads sold. But people still want those numbers. In the absence of such data from Apple, those people turn to outside sources like Gartner and IDC. Fun fact: When Apple did release sales data, IDC and Gartner were always off. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. I’m sure they did (and do) their best. But we used to get hard data from Apple on which to hang our hats. Now, it’s just the outsiders, their differing ways of doing things, and their differing sets of numbers. 

Par example: Cult of Mac has new numbers from IDC that show Mac shipments up 4.3% last quarter versus the same quarter a year earlier. Meanwhile, the latest release from Gartner has Mac shipments up 8.6% last quarter versus the same quarter a year earlier. What’s funny is, they’re closer on actual unit numbers. Gartner’s got Apple shipping 7-million Macs last quarter, while IDC has Apple shipping 7.2-million. 

Maybe we could talk about their areas of agreement. Both firms indicate that Mac sales grew, even as the wider PC market shrank. IDC puts the market down 6%, while Gartner puts it down 7.3%. Both also have Apple in fourth-place in terms of units moved behind Dell in third, HP in second, and Lenovo in first. 

Working against PC growth is a tough compare. Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa is quoted in that firm’s release, saying:

After an unprecedented Chromebook surge in 2020 and early 2021, driven by demand from the U.S. educational market, Chromebook growth has tempered… It was a challenging quarter for the PC and Chromebook market to achieve growth, as this time last year the PC market registered its highest growth in decades.

Meanwhile, IDC’s Ryan Reith says he and his:

…have witnessed some slowdown in both the education and consumer markets, but all indicators show demand for commercial PCs remains very strong… We also believe that the consumer market will pick up again in the near future.

Tink? Is that you? Applause, applause, applause…