M1 MacBook Air helps Apple shift a whopping 6.5 million notebooks in Q3

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MacBook Air power
Despite chip supply problems, the MacBook business is booming.
Photo: Apple

Apple shipped a rather impressive 6.5 million notebooks last quarter, according to new data — thanks in large part to the success of the M1 MacBook Air. That figure makes Cupertino the fourth-largest laptop vendor in the world.

Although Lenovo, HP and Dell all shipped significantly more laptops than Apple during the three-month period, the MacBook-maker did see decent growth of 10% over the same quarter last year.

Apple silicon a big success

Remember when Apple was facing criticism for not paying enough attention to the Mac? It seemed to be more interested in iPhone and iPad while its desktop machine and notebooks went without notable improvements for some time.

That all changed with the introduction of Apple silicon, which has driven millions of Mac users to upgrade their machines. Last quarter alone, Apple shipped a whopping 6.5 million laptops, according to data from Strategy Analytics.

The more affordable and incredibly popular MacBook Air played a large part in boosting notebook growth for Apple, the report says. Enterprise users returning to work after months out during the pandemic also helped increase Mac sales.

“The commercial customers’ upgrade kicked in as some employees returned to in-person work with the target to improve productivity,” reads the report. Students returning to school also provided the Mac with a boost.

Shipments could have been better

“Education demand (including consumer) was better in the developed market as back to university discounts gave consumers good reason to upgrade now rather than later.”

These figures could have been even better for Apple. The ongoing global chip shortage, which is said to be affecting Cupertino more than initially expected, prevented shipments from being quite as spectacular as they could have been.

Still, these are promising results for Apple’s newest MacBook models — and they will almost certainly get even more impressive now that the company’s revamped MacBook Pro with even faster M1 chips is on the market.

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