Mac Sales Slump Remedy

Apple finally feels the PC sales slump:

Apple shipped 4 percent to 8 percent fewer Mac computers during the second quarter of 2016, compared with a year earlier, according to new estimates from two research firms – even while some of its bigger rivals managed to find growth in the PC business.

This is a notable turn from the past few years when PC sales were slumping while Mac sales were relatively healthy and growing, even if only modestly:

Apple enjoyed eight consecutive quarters of year-on-year Mac sales increases before posting a 4 percent drop in units sold during the last three months of 2015. That was followed by a 12 percent drop in the first quarter of this year.

Another take is from these guys (to whom I am usually hesitant to link):

Apple’s line of Mac computers is not selling as well as it used to and the company needs to launch a new laptop in order to turn the business around.

The prescription to “launch a new laptop” is likely valid, sort of echoed on a recent episode of The Talk Show by John Gruber and Marco Arment when they discussed the lack of updates to several models, especially the Mac Pro.

I’m not sure why Apple has been waiting so long to refresh their better computers. Maybe they underestimated demand for the new MacBook, their lower-end consumer grade models, which they focused on early this year and last. Even a company as large as Apple does not have unlimited bandwidth to work on all these things at once, I suppose. Rumors of a new MacBook Pro with an “OLED display touch bar” above the keyboard are bouncing around now, so maybe something is imminent.

Categories    Apple    Technology