news For the first time, Apple has overtaken Acer and Dell in PC unit shipments in the Australia and New Zealand market to claim second position behind HP. This could be the effect of its retail store expansion and the launch of the Macbook Air Sandy Bridge refresh model.
The record, disclosed by analyst firm IDC in a statement this week, is interesting in a market where overall PC sales have dropped 8% quarter on quarter (QoQ) in Q3 2011 to 1.61 million units. But the market went up by 3% compared to Q3 2010, thanks to the heavy sales promotions by national retailers such as Harvey Norman who had a ‘Buy one get one free offer’ that strongly pushed sales. At the end of Q3 2011, according to IDC, HP leads with a market share of 22%, followed by Apple with 15%, Acer with 14%, Dell with 13% and Toshiba with 9%.
In Australia, the deteriorating European economy, concerns over the carbon tax implementation and short supply of AMD processers in the self-assembled PC market further added to the drop in sales this quarter. The Rugby World Cup that greatly boosted New Zealand’s economy and customer attitudes adversely impacted IT spending as funds were diverted to non-IT products.
Speaking about the performance of HP this quarter, IDC market analyst Amy Cheah said, “While most vendors’ performance slowed in Q3, HP, in particular, took the strongest hit. There were delays in government project rollouts while HP’s channels cut back in stock intake as a precautionary measure in view of market softness.” Cheah added, “The unfortunate ‘PSG spin off’ debacle also momentarily affected confidence in HP’s strategic outlook which opened a window of opportunity for competitors such as Apple to gain share.”
IDC analysts are expecting a growth of 10% next quarter with shipment numbers reaching 1.77 million units as year-end seasonal sales and education rollouts begin. Flooding in Thailand had caused an industry-wide shortage of hard disk drives (HDD). However this is not expected to impact Q4 sales since orders for Q4 were placed before the flooding incident. Large educational deals in Queensland and New South Wales are expected to lead the growth in Q4. However the impact of the HDD shortage is expected to be felt in the first quarter of next year.
Cheah also said that the effect of the shortage in HDD supply will impact end users as vendors will skip promotions and focus on premium products leading to an increase in price of end products. “Industry leaders with the economies of scale advantage and flexibility to manage allocation may see competitive opportunities arise out of this situation,” said Cheah.
Image credit: Apple
How do they define PC for Apple? I assume they include iPads and iPod Touch in those figures? Find it hard to believe the Apple Mac/iMac by itself is outselling Dell.
Yes apple ‘redefined’ iPads to be part of what is classes as a ‘PC’ sales, Its part of steve jobs reality distortion field.
If Apple is including iPads, then is HP including the TouchPad?
Tablets are not PCs and should be classed separately.
As for the HP touchpads, I don’t think HP has come out and said either way what they did with the touchpad sales. Anyhow the fact is HP worldwide only sold 903,354 devices, so your talking less than 1m devices, and this is a once off event.
The iPad on the other hand is selling about 40m units a year, so by apple wanting to class them as ‘PC’s this adjusts the results by a lot! Towards them of course!
@ Level380 “Yes apple ‘redefined’ iPads to be part of what is classes as a ‘PC’ sales, Its part of steve jobs reality distortion field.”
“The iPad on the other hand is selling about 40m units a year, so by apple wanting to class them as ‘PC’s this adjusts the results by a lot! Towards them of course!”
Apple don’t classify iPads as PC sales. I think you are letting your emotion get in the way of facts.
According to the same source as this article, Apple sold 337,000 iPads in Q3 2011.
If iPads were included in these numbers, Apple wouldn’t be the number one “PC seller” in Australia for Q3 2011. They would be number one. Source for tablet numbers, where iPad is tracked:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/410485/anz_media_tablet_market_growth_slows_q3_idc/
Sorry – wouldn’t be number two*, they would be number one.
I believe its only Air’s and MacBook Pros, both products (as well as tablets), have been selling as hotcakes and are apples most profitable products
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