IDC Analyst: Mac Sales Grew 31 Percent in Fourth Quarter

As everyone prepares to hear how Apple did financially during the first fiscal quarter of 2010, analysts are releasing numbers on the Cupertino, Calif. company’s success during the fourth quarter of 2009. IDC said Apple’s U.S. sales rose 31 percent for the quarter, a day after Gartner researchers announced a 24 percent jump.

Apple’s 31 percent growth rate was higher the most computer makers, who saw a 24 percent jump during that three-month period, according to IDC. The Mac maker is in fifth plan, selling 5.6 million Macs for 8 percent of the market, according to IDC.

Despite the economic downturn, PC sales in the U.S. “exploded,” driven by what IDC termed a “rubber-band” effect after PC buying contracted a year ago. Also propelling sales were low-priced desktop and notebook computers.

“Once again, the consumer market overcame the weak commercial sector to save the quarter,” said David Daoud, research manager for IDC’s U.S. Quarterly Pc Tracker.

On Wednesday, Gartner released its own figures, showing Apple shipped 1.4 million computers during the fourth quarter of 2009, a 24 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2008, when the computer maker shipped 1.2 million Macs. Apple’s market share dipped slightly during the fourth quarter to 7.5 percent, down from 7.7 percent a year ago.

Apple will announce revenue for the first quarter of 2010on Jan. 25. The company could report earning $11.98 billion, an 18 percent increase over last year.

DON'T MISS
Apple Notebook Market Share Jumps To 10.6 Percent In North America

[Via 9to5Mac and Wall Street Journal]

2 comments »

About the author

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by Ed Sutherland.

Posted in News |

Mattzook
Good. Apple could use all the extra profit dollars they can get…. to pay off a bunch of patent lawsuits that intend to get a free ride from Apple’s market success.
imajoebob
The PC writers are going batshit over this report. Apparently, even though Apple blew the doors off the industry average growth (about 21%), they’re in deep doodoo because Toshiba moved past them to become 4th in Unit sales. Somehow the writers at ZD/c|net are convinced that HP and Toshiba eating all the other PC makers’ lunch (Dell only grew 5%?) means the doom for Apple. And somehow, HP growing 40% on sales dominated by netbooks and other sub $500 models trumps Apple’s 31% on mostly $1,000-$2,000 models.
To capsulize the PC “reporters:” Dell sales in toilet means big trouble for Apple.
The comments are almost as entertaining as the articles. It’s like it’s still 2002 over there.