IDC: Apple is the world’s fifth largest PC supplier

According to market researcher IDC, Apple takes fifth place for the first time in worldwide delivery of PCs. Thanks to price cuts and increasing demand in western markets, Apple is said to have overtaken competitor Asus.

According to IDC, PC sales worldwide have stabilized; the decline was only 1.7 percent, after many quarters of larger declines. Particularly in the established markets such as those in western countries, there would be an improved demand and Chromebook delivery among others would be on the rise, while the PC market would benefit from the decline in demand for tablets. In addition, according to the research company, the effects of the replacement of Windows XP systems have faded and the growing demand for low-cost systems is a risk to the PC industry.

It’s all the more striking that Apple, which focuses on the high end of the market with iMacs and MacBooks, has displaced Asus from fifth place in global deliveries, according to IDC. Apple is now said to have a market share of 6.3 percent and shipped nearly 5 million systems in the quarter, up from 5.7 percent and 4.58 million last year. The largest PC manufacturer remains Lenovo, followed by HP, Dell and Acer respectively.

Apple is not in the top 5 at the competing research firm Gartner and Asus sees its market share increase from 6.2 percent last year to 7.3 percent last quarter. The reason may be that Gartner counts tablets with x86 processors and Windows 8 in PC shipments; IDC does not. At Gartner, the top four are otherwise identical to IDC’s and all manufacturers are seeing their market share increase at the expense of the smaller manufacturers.