PC market falls 8%, Apple year-over-year market share drops slightly

Gartner and IDC released their quarterly PC shipment numbers. No tablet data, no phone data, just personal computers. Lots to chew on. Some highlights from Gartner’s US numbers:

  • The big winner in all this seems to be Lenovo. They trail Apple in units shipped, but increased their market share by 24.6%.
  • Apple’s year-over-year market share fell 2.3% to 13.4%.
  • Apple’s 3rd quarter market share showed growth over Q2, going from 11.6% to 13.4%. 3rd quarter numbers are traditionally stronger, as it is the back-to-school quarter.
  • To me, there are two big takeaways from this. First, tablets are cannibalizing PC sales. No big news there. Second, I see any decline in Apple sales as a sign of the aging of Apple’s Mac line. The iMac and MacBook Air refreshes are recent and the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro lines are due, hopefully soon. My instinct here is that we’ll see a nice bounce in the numbers, starting with Q4.