Analysts: Apple is losing ground in desktop and laptop market

Apple has lost market share in desktops and laptops in the past year, IDC and Gartner say. Other manufacturers, on the other hand, delivered more PCs, while Apple’s deliveries fell. The analysts offer no explanation for this.

Gartner estimates that shipments of Mac products were down 8.5 percent from a year ago, while IDC estimates the decline is 11.4 percent. The analysts do not yet have exact figures from the American manufacturer. Those will only be released when Apple announces its quarterly figures and that will happen at the beginning of next month.

Neither analyst firm offers an explanation for the decline in Mac product shipments. The Macs outperformed the market for years, but now it’s reversed. Lenovo, HP and Dell, the top three PC makers, delivered more devices than in the third quarter of last year. Analysts disagree about Acer; Gartner says Acer’s shipments declined, but IDC said they grew.

The global PC market has remained roughly stable over the past year. Every three months, approximately 67 million desktops and laptops are sold. The market for desktops and laptops is much larger than that of tablets, but smaller than that of smartphones. Lenovo is again the market leader, according to both analysts, after it briefly lost that position to HP.