Reports from both Gartner and IDC confirm that PC shipments remain in decline by -9.5 and -11.5 percent respectively. However, Apple's Macintosh continues to be least affected and continues its increasing market share, now at about 7.1 to 7.4 percent globally. There was a time, about a decade ago when Apple's Macintosh worldwide market share was only 2 percent.
On April 11th, IDC released its analysis.
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 60.6 million units in the first quarter of 2016 (1Q16), a year-on-year decline of 11.5%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Shipments were in line with conservative expectations for a decline of 11.3%, and anticipated a relatively weak environment during the first half of 2016 as Windows 10 enterprise upgrades largely remained in pilot phase while consumer demand remains weak.
Apple took the fourth spot worldwide and continued to outperform the market, thanks to solid growth in North America.
Garner's data shows a one percent growth for Apple 1Q15 to 1Q16. IDC shows a slight negative growth, but the difference is small. The upshot is that Apple is suffering far less than, say, HP whose year-over-year growth was negative, at roughly -10 percent.
Some observers have argued that the decline will come to a stop as businesses and consumer warm up to Windows 10 and start to replace older PCs. Others argue that smartphones, iPads and MacBooks have put a permanent dent in the market for complex PCs, one that they will never recover from.
Image credit: Gartner
In addition, some observers of Apple foresee a day when the Mac gives way to a powerful, productive iPad Pro, but looking at the data shown here suggests that Apple isn't done taking an ever increasing bite out of the PC market with its MacBook and iMac lineups.
As always, the caveat is that these numbers represent shipments, not end user sales for a single, post holiday quarter. Even so, Apple's success story remains ongoing relative to the rest of the PC market.