Mac misery continues as Apple’s computers slump to half-decade low

New figures have shown that the market share of Apple’s computers has fallen to its lowest level in over half a decade.

The stats come from Net Applications, a web analytics firm commonly cited for operating system and browser market share, with figures for December showing that Macs only represented 6.1% of all PCs out there.

That’s a major slump since the spring of last year – back in April 2016, Apple’s computers held a 9.6% market share. And furthermore it’s the lowest figure to be reported since August 2011, almost five and a half years ago now.

As Computerworld, which initially spotted the figures, notes, Net Applications doesn’t measure sales, but as stated market share (or to be more precise, computers being used online). So while it shows that Macs are being used less overall, it doesn’t necessarily reflect exactly how many sales are slipping through Apple’s fingers.

• Find out how the new MacBook Pro fared in our hands-on review

Further evidence

That said, other recent statistics corroborate this Apple slump, with analyst firm Gartner’s October 2016 figures for the overall PC market also showing a big drop in Mac sales which were down 13.4% compared to the same time the previous year.

This actually meant Asus overtook Apple to claim fourth place in the top ranked PC vendors, knocking Tim Cook’s firm back into fifth.

Of course, the Mac’s loss was Windows and Linux’s gain, as Net Applications observed that both of these operating systems picked up around 0.5% over the course of last year; that’s particularly impressive for the latter, as Linux now stands at 2.2%.

A couple of months back, Apple claimed that early interest and online orders for its MacBook Pros made the new models its best-selling ever despite their pricey nature, but whatever sales levels these notebooks have hit doesn’t appear to have been able to make a positive impact on market share.

Via: Digital Trends

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