IDC shows Apple 3rd in US as Acer falls to iPad

Apple has managed get almost 11 percent of computer market share in the US, IDC said in a preliminary estimate on Wednesday. Mac shipments shot up nearly 15 percent year-to-year in the spring to put Apple at third place in the US with 10.7 percent and 1.92 million Macs. Much of that growth came at Acer's expense, as the Taiwan company's overdependence on netbooks and failure to cope with the iPad saw its shipments drop by more than a quarter, sinking it from third place a year ago to fifth place, with 8.5 percent.

Leaders HP and Dell continued smaller but significant slides, falling to 26.3 percent (an 0.6 percent drop) and 22.2 percent (down 10.2 percent). Even Toshiba, normally one of the faster-moving PC builders, saw shipments up just 3.7 percent to get it 9.1 percent share and take fourth place.

Worldwide, HP and Dell were flat, holding near-still at 18.1 percent and 12.9 percent. Nearly all the gains in the top five were from China-focused Lenovo, which shipped 22.9 percent more PCs and climbed to third place with 12.2 percent. Acer's strategy was punished to a lesser extent on this stage but still saw its shipments down by a tenth and a drop to fourth place with 10.9 percent. ASUS grew slowly at fifth place with 5.3 percent.

Some of the fall among Windows PC makers was blamed by IDC an unusually high 12 percent growth last spring. Research analyst Rajani Singh was nonetheless direct in blaming the overall collapse of netbooks as well as a shift to tablets dominated primarily by the iPad. Companies were also focusing more on cloud and virtual machine efforts that reduced the need for more PCs.

In the US, Apple has grown faster than the industry for the past five years but has had trouble advancing past fourth place. IDC didn't attempt to explain its rise, but the new MacBook Air and updated MacBook Pros likely spurred demand.

Acer has been reorganizing around mobile but has had little immediate success as it has had to gradually back away from its reputation for cheap PCs and towards either higher end systems or tablets. The company has had to write off $150 million in unsold PCs in Europe and is generally expected to be lowering its shipment targets.

By Electronista Staff

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