[NewsPoster]

The latest estimates for retail sales and marketshare from industry analyst firm IDC claim that Mac sales have risen significantly, even in the face of an overall and deepening industry slump in traditional notebook and desktop PCs. For the June quarter that ended at the end of last month, IDC estimates that Mac shipments were up 16.1 percent worldwide from the year-ago quarter while the PC market generally saw an 11.8 percent contraction year-over-year. Apple was the only major computer maker to show a gain in the report.

IDC, which -- like its rival Gartner -- rarely hits exact numbers, since its estimates are based on field reports and speculation about shipments rather than end-user sales, ranks Apple as the fourth-highest seller of desktop and notebook computers, largely on the strength of its portable line. The strong performance may suggest the company has been more successful than previously thought with its latest MacBook revival and MacBook Air and Pro models, which saw mostly minor updates with the exception of the addition (in the Pro model) of the Force Touch trackpad it shares with the new Retina MacBook.

IDC believes Apple sold 5.14 million Macs in the June quarter, which would put it ahead of Acer and Asus in the top six maker rankings, but behind the big three -- Lenovo (13.44 million), HP (12.25 million), and Dell (9.56 million) -- by a significant margin. Acer and Asus were estimated to have sold roughly 4.33 million units each.

IDC figures for US computer market

Without Apple's exceptionally strong performance, things would have looked even bleaker for the Windows-based PC market, though some analysts believe that the arrival of Windows 10 later this year could help mitigate the overall decline the traditional PC space has seen over the last few years. Gartner, by contrast, continues not to list Apple as one of the top five global vendors, and estimated 68.4 million computers shipped in the June quarter, a drop of 9.5 percent year-over-year, compared to IDC's guess of 66.14 million units for a global drop of 11.8 percent.

In the US, the difference between the two firm's predictions grows ever more disparate. IDC reports Apple in third place in terms of marketshare, with 2.21 million units sold in the US for an year-over-year gain of 11.9 percent -- more than Lenovo, but less than HP and Dell. Toshiba rounded out the top five for the US market.

Gartner figures for US computer market

Gartner, by contrast, claims Apple sold only 1.92 million Macs in the quarter, a drop of 2.9 percent from a year ago and below an estimated two million units sold by Lenovo. Unusually, the two firms actually agreed on the number of Macs Apple sold in the year-ago quarter, 1.971 million, but disagreed by more than a full percentage point on what the figure meant in terms of US marketshare. For comparison, Apple sold a total of 4.56 million Macs worldwide in its fiscal second quarter, which would mean a 15 percent gain if IDC's prediction is correct. Apple does not break out Mac sales for specific markets such as the US.

[Jeronimo2000]

"The strong performance may suggest the company has been more successful than previously thought with its latest MacBook revival" ... which they only sold in homeopathic doses, since availabilty of said MacBook was downright abysmal until very recently, and is still spotty in places.

[twistsol]

The headline I read was, "IDC, which has never once been right predicting anything about Apple, says Mac sales are up sharply which means Apple will either really have a blowout quarter and it would be too embarrassing for them to predict doom and gloom this time, or they're trying a new tactic that when Mac sales are only up 15% vs the 16.1% they predicted, the pundits can still claim Apple is doomed."

That headline might be a bit long though.

[Mike Wuerthele]

I like it, though!

[Charles Martin]

Essentially we do take anything from IDC and Gartner with a number of grains of salt, but we've noticed Gartner is more generally more negative on Apple for no clear reason -- they keep getting their rear ends handed to them when the quarterly results come out.

[chucker]

You'd think if you consistently keep getting your sums wrong, eventually you would get thrown out of school - but it seems Gartner must be "shaggin" the headmistress.

[elroth]

The reason IDC and Gartner "unusually agreed" on the number of Macs sold in the year-ago quarter, is because after Apple announced their sales for that quarter, the two companies changed their figures to match what Apple reported. Other companies don't report their sales, so all the other figures for the year-ago quarter are merely estimates (as are all the figures for the most recent quarter, at least until Apple reports later this month.