2017 was a great year for Mac sales

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Isn't it time you swapped that dusty old Mac for a new one?
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Mac shipments rose in a competitive computer market last year to give Apple a greater market share. The company, alongside HP, enjoyed impressive growth year-over-year, while big players like Asus and Acer saw their shares fall.

Apple has been pushing the iPad as its vision of post-PC computing after six years of declining sales in the overall PC market. But in the fourth quarter of 2017, total shipments actually grew thanks to strong performance from a number of vendors.

“The fourth quarter results showed some potentially encouraging headway against the difficult environment in retail and consumer PCs,” said Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.

“Enticed by a growing array of products that promise all-day battery life, high portability, and address emerging use cases that require more compute power, pockets of the consumer base are taking a serious look at these revamped PCs.”

Apple’s market share rises

Apple shipped a total of 5.77 million units, according to IDC figures, with gave the company an 8.2 percent share of the PC market. During the same quarter last year, it shipped 5.37 million units, resulting in a market share of 7.7 percent.

That’s a shipment growth of 7.3 percent year-over-year. The only company that beat that was HP, which shipped 16.57 million units to secure 23.5 percent of the PC market — up 8.3 percent from last year. Dell saw its shipments increase 0.7 percent.

Lenovo shipments remained flat year-over-year, while Asus and Acer saw their shipments fall 11.2 and 8.1 percent, respectively.

Total PC shipments for Q4 2017 topped 70.58 million units, up 0.7 percent from 70.09 million units during the same period last year. Apple’s total shipments for 2017 as a whole topped 19.6 million, up from 18.6 million in 2016.

Apple remains in fourth place

Despite growth last quarter, Apple remains in fourth place in the PC market, behind HP, Lenovo, and Dell. It has some way to go if it wants to catch up, with third-placed Dell grabbing a 15.7 percent share of the market last quarter.

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