Is the PC back?

Gartner’s own press release has an interesting spin:

“After Two Years of Decline, Worldwide PC Shipments Experienced Flat Growth in Second Quarter of 2014, According to Gartner”

Gartner’s actual figure is 0.1% growth. Gartner and IDC measure slightly different quantities as “PC” but they don’t disagree much. IDC still shows declining PC sales at about -1.7%. However both also include the Mac in their accounting of PC. If we were to remove the Mac and measure “Windows PC”1 Gartner’s figures would show -0.8% drop in PC ex-Mac shipments.

The difference in growth between the Mac and non-Mac PCs is shown in the following graph.

Screen Shot 2014-07-23 at 7-23-5.23.08 PM

As Apple puts it, the Mac grew faster (and hence gained share) for 31 out of the last 32 quarters.  It missed on this perfect record during the fourth quarter of 2012 when the then fresh new iMac was impossible to buy due to production issues.

So as far as the Mac is concerned the slowing of the decline in PC unit shipments isn’t at its expense. Continue reading “Is the PC back?”

  1. In quotes because this total includes Linux and Chromebook []