While Copilot+ PCs are extensively being rolled out across retailers, Apple Mac sales are falling sharply.
A new report by Canalys indicated that Macs have experienced a significant 17.5 per cent drop in worldwide annual growth over the past quarter.
Canalys says that sales of Macs dropped to 5.1 million units in the third quarter of 2024, compared to 6.2 million units the same quarter from the same period last year, which therefore resulted in a 1.8 per cent drop in its PC market share.
Apple is therefore believed to hold a 7.7 per cent market share within the third quarter of this year, and is at the bottom of the five top PC brands.
That list is led by Lenovo which had a 24.8 per cent share, followed by HP (20.4 per cent), Dell (14.8 per cent) and Asus (8.3 per cent).
According to Canalys, the global PC market grew year-on-year for a fourth consecutive quarter in Q3 2024, with total shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations up 1.3 per cent to 66.4 million units.
“The uptick in demand has been especially strong from businesses, which now have just a year to upgrade their fleets to Windows 11 and avoid paying extended support fees,” said Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys. “The launch of the latest-generation AI PC processors from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm is also strengthening the value proposition of upgrading an old PC.”
The falling sales of Macs could be attributed to reports that Apple is preparing to launch M4 chip versions of its Macs later this year.
Apple’s next version of the Mac mini is expected to be powered by its M4 chip. It is believed to be upgrading all its Macs to the latest M4 chips.
The company is reported to be preparing two versions of the new Mac mini. The first will use the base configuration of the M4 chip, while a higher-end Mac mini will use a yet-to-be-announced M4 Pro chip. It is also readying versions of the iMac desktop and MacBook Pro too with chips from its M4 line.
