Mac shipments outpace market in Q1

Both Gartner and IDC report shipments of Apple's Mac far outpaced its rivals in the U.S. market during the first quarter, as Apple continues to gain market share.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News

Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.

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Tom Krazit

April 16, 2008 4:09 p.m. PT

2 min read

Apple's Macs, such as the MacBook Air, continue to sell well in the U.S. market. CNET

Apple's Mac business outgrew the overall PC market in the U.S. by a significant margin in the first quarter, according to research from IDC and Gartner released Wednesday.

Check out mycolleague Erica Ogg's post for the overall news, which has the PC market as a whole growing by 14.6 percent, but the U.S. market growing by just 3.5 percent. Despite that tepid growth in the U.S., Apple saw its U.S. shipments increase by a margin far greater than the market, as well as any other PC maker in the top 5.

According to Gartner, Mac shipments increased by 32.5 percent to U.S. customers. IDC didn't think Mac growth was quite that strong, pegging the increase at 25.1 percent. The numbers are different because the two companies count PC shipments in slightly different ways, but it really doesn't matter: Apple had a good quarter. Dell was the only other company to post double-digit growth in the U.S., according to both market research companies, with about 15.6 percent growth in the first quarter.

Gartner says that Apple appears to have shown "decent growth" within the professional PC market, which is a little outside of its usual haunts. Apple now has 6.6 percent of the overall U.S. market, according to Gartner, while IDC says Apple's at 6 percent market share. The two firms only release the top 5 in each region at first, and Apple is still pretty far away from cracking the worldwide Top 5.

Apple reports its quarterly earnings next week, and while there have been concerns about the iPod and iPhone businesses heading into that report, any concern about Mac sales can be safely laid to rest.