Analyst firm: Apple delivered 6.5 million MacBooks in third quarter

Analyst firm Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple shipped 6.5 million MacBooks in the third quarter; that is 10 percent more than in the same period a year earlier. The company had record sales for Macs in the quarter.

The increase in MacBook deliveries is mainly due to good sales of the MacBook Air with M1 processor. At the presentation of the quarterly results, Apple CEO Tim Cook said last week that there was strong demand for that model.

Apple itself does not mention numbers of MacBooks delivered. According to Strategy Analytics, this is a total of 6.5 million copies in the third quarter. This gives Apple a worldwide market share of 10 percent in the laptop market, good for fourth place.

Lenovo has been in first place for four consecutive quarters with a record number of deliveries. The Chinese manufacturer delivered an estimated 15.3 million laptops and has a market share of 23 percent. That is a growth of 5 percentage points compared to a year earlier.

According to Strategy Analytics, Dell shipped 12.2 million laptops in the quarter; that is 50 percent more than in the same quarter a year earlier. As a result, the market share grew by 5 percentage points. The overall laptop market grew 8 percent, despite ongoing chip shortages.

The figures are for the third quarter of 2021, which ended at the end of September. Apple introduced the new MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max sockets in October. Whether they can further increase Apple’s market share will have to be seen from fourth-quarter figures.