Apple shipped 7.2 million Macs in the third quarter of 2023, according to a market analysis firm. That’s a whopping 23% decrease from the previous year, but Q3 2022 was one of the best quarters Apple has ever had for a bad reason.
Ignoring last year’s unusual quarter, Mac shipments are holding steady despite the end of the pandemic. Windows PC makers certainly can’t say that.
COVID has lingering effects on Mac shipments
It shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that the COVID-19 pandemic did strange things to the global PC market. Demand for computers went up at the same time the ability to make these products went down.
For Apple, problems persisted into 2022. For much of the first half of the year, it was unable to meet demand for Macs. So after these production difficulties were cleared up, the company had a huge surge in Mac shipments. Which was great for Apple in 2022, but it makes Q3 2023 look bad.
“Apple’s outsized decline was the result of unfavorable year-over-year comparisons as the company recovered from a COVID-related halt in production during 3Q22,” noted the market analysts at IDC on Monday.
For a more useful comparison, look farther back and ignore 2022. Last quarter Mac shipments totaled 7.2 million (as noted previously), which is about the same number it shipped back in the third quarter of 2021. And the total is up slightly from the 7.0 million shipped in the same quarter way back in 2020. So shipments have held steady over the past several years as long as the surge of 2022 is ignored as an outlier.
Windows PC makers struggle
Unlike Apple, shipments from makers of Windows computers are dropping. For consistency sake, let’s continue to compare 2023 to 2021.
In Q3 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, Lenovo shipments hit 20.1 million, according to data from IDC. In the most recent quarter, they’re down to 16.0 million — a 20% decline. HP’s shipments in Q3 were 13.5 million last quarter, down 27% from the same quarter of 2020. Dell’s went down 15% over the same time period.
For comparison, Mac shipments are up 3% when comparing Q3 2023 and Q3 2020.
