PC Sales Are Up, Macs Getting Even More Popular

By Marcus Yam
published

Americans are loving the Macs, but the rest of the world is still sticking to the PC.

Analyst firms Gartner and International Data Corporation (IDC) are reporting similar findings, that the computer market is growing. This is good news for everyone.

On a worldwide level the big dogs are HP, Dell and Acer, with a third of the world's PC sales going to those companies. The same trio of companies also gets more than half of the computer sales that happen in the United States.

For those of you in the U.S., have you noticed, especially in cafes and classrooms, that there seem to be a lot more laptops with the glowing fruit logo in the back? There's numbers to back up the increasing number of Macs floating around.

Depending on whose numbers you look at, Apple is now either the third or fourth biggest computer seller in the U.S.

Here are the early numbers for top computer sellers in the U.S. of A, from both the IDC and Gartner.

 

And here are the numbers for the rest of the world, also from IDC and Gartner.

Sources: Gartner, IDC

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
137 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ulysses35
    Americans loves their Macs ? that doesnt surprise me - typical it costs more so must be better.
    Reply
  • damasvara
    Macs? I thinl I'll still go with PCs, thank you...
    Reply
  • Marco925
    Woot, Asus 5th Place? geez only a few years ago their notebook market was nothing.
    Reply
  • aevm
    Unfortunately for Apple, their real competition is not HP/Dell/Acer/Toshiba. Making progress against those companies is nice, but not very relevant.

    People who really know about computers don't buy them from major vendors. They build their own, or have them custom built by small local shops. For example where I live, the same $2000 can buy a much nicer gaming PC that way. Not only you get a more powerful machine for the same money, but you can also make it a lot more upgradable. Major vendors have this nasty habit of cutting corners. For example they save $20 on a MB but that means no PCI-E slot available for Crossfire or SLI later when you need it, or fewer SATA ports or a smaller case (so you can't add more HDDs), etc. I've had my experience with Dell and HP and I'm not going there again.


    Reply
  • Fendulon
    Macs have become cool, so people buy them. They are ridiculously overpriced... no thanks. I've never recommended a Mac to somebody because it's so expensive, and honestly there's nothing a Mac can do that a PC can't. And viruses, well that's just user error, I haven't had one in many years.
    Reply
  • darkchazz
    More mac users = more idiots who know nothing about hardware and just trying to look cool.
    Reply
  • Glorian
    I have a lot of people tell me they are gonna buy a mac for the old excuse that they don't wanna worry about a virus. I always remind them that its going to be more expensive and they'd be lucky if half the programs they had on their pc will be available on the mac.
    Reply
  • randomizer
    Let's watch the same, tired old comments from PC users show up again. Yes, Macs are overpriced, Macs are for stupid people, Steve Jobs is a tool, , Macs are only for those who can't surf the web safely, etc. We've heard it all before, save your keyboard and don't bother posting it all again.

    It's so sad that so many on this site can't accept that some people just like Macs. No joke! People have preferences! Who would have guessed? It's kind of like the AMD vs Intel thing, but with whole computers.

    Personally I wouldn't buy a Mac. I am not a big fan of excess eye candy. I can barely stomach the Windows 7 UI due to all that glass.
    Reply
  • rocky1234
    Mac's are getting a increase because Apple has bootcamp that lets its users install Windows on them & since Windows runs 90% of the software & games out there a lot of people are less afraid to make the switch knowing they can just slip a copy of Windows on their shiny over priced MAC.

    Which brings up a couple of questions if MAC's & the MAC OS are so good why do people install Windows on them the first chance they get I mean come on if OSX is so much better than Windows according to Mr Jobs then there should be no need for Windows to be installed on a MAC. I mean we know why Mr Jobs & company are allowing it to be done is because it is selling their hardware so in a sense maybe Mr Jobs should be either thanking Microsoft for helping sell their over price hardware or cutting them a big cheque each month for commission cheques. Lets face it if Bootcamp was not their & it was not so easy to install a competitors product on the Mac's they would not be making any head way in the PC market.

    This is just my view but I think Microsoft should change their Eula like Apple does to say something like only Windows Certified Computers can have a installed version of Windows installed. I mean Apple gets away with it why can't Microsoft. Sure it would make it a bit harder for the small shops but they would manage fine. This is something MS will have to do if they want to hold on to their OS market share. Oh wait I guess they are because for every MAC sold they have a chance of that user installing a copy of Windows on it so I guess MS is not losing anything they still make the Windows sale but in the process the PC market share takes a little hit each year.

    I guess it is up to the User if they want to pay a heavy Apple tax or not but for the love of god use the OS that came with it after all according to Mr jobs it is the best OS ever made & is magical so use it already there should be no need to install a second rate OS if you got such a wonderful OS in OSX.

    Sorry for the rant just a die hard PC user & happen to like Windows & Linux. I really have no use for toy OS's like OSX that is based off of tech from the late 90's with a shiny GUI. Yes I have used OSX I see both PC's & MAC's in our shop for repair & yes MAC hardware fails to never let Mr Jobs BS you that they never fail or the OS never crashes the Apple hardware & OS crash or fail just as much as a PC. But most never see the Apple side of hardware failures because most repairs are done by Apple shops themselves it is harder to find a fully Apple certified shop now days like our shop is. I had to learn the Apple OS from the bottom up as well as the hardware & trust me there is nothing special going on there under the Apple logo same crap as a PC just a more uniform hardware platform since Apple controls the process from start to finish.

    I'm sure I will be down rated & called a PC fanatic or worse but oh well just had to vent on the subject. :)
    Reply
  • doped
    mac = fashionable item like we see in cars some times, ford ka, fiat 500 etc. although I wouldn't buy a mac, i would consider using it if someone paid for me. it has some nice gnu tools that I certainly miss on the pc(windows). although it's an unfair comparison, since mac is hardware + software/OS, and pc is many things(taken the fact that mac is essentially a pc nowadays anyway). a PC the way we know it in this day and age is x86, be it 32bit or 64bit, and an ibm legacy bios design(which definitely is questionable now) and it runs about anything today since everything is more or less designed for that platform. Amiga is dead, atari, spectrum and whatnot. Microsoft is the one we can "thank" for this monopoly in hardware platforms. wintel is still very much the playing field. Sad but true, so ppl buying alternative platforms/OS is certainly nothing I'm against, but apples methods is unfortunately no better than microsofts, and that's a way i won't support. But one man can't make a difference.
    Reply