Research firm Gartner today released its preliminary personal computer shipment data for the second quarter of 2012, offering up a picture of market performance during the quarter. While Apple experienced only small year-over-year unit growth of 4.3% in the United States, the company was the only one of the top five vendors to see year-over-year growth and the company once again outperformed the overall industry and its 5.7% decline.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)
Apple's share of the U.S. market rose to 12.0% for the quarter after two straight quarters of decline due to the company's seasonality. The figure, which allowed Apple to consolidate its hold on the third position in the U.S. market behind HP and Dell, marked Apple's second best performance in recent years following a 12.9% share in the third quarter of 2011. The third quarter, which includes back-to-school purchases in many of Apple's strongest markets, is typically its best-performing quarter.
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-2Q12 (Gartner)
As usual, Gartner did not cover Apple's worldwide market share for the quarter, as the company does not rank among the top five vendors on a worldwide basis. PC shipments experienced a 0.1% year-over-year decline on a worldwide basis, with strong growth from Asus and Lenovo being offset by declines from HP and Dell.
Update: IDC has released its own estimates for the quarter, pegging Apple at a 1.1% year-over-year decline in U.S. shipments and an 11.4% share of that market. IDC estimated that Lenovo was able to enter the top five on the strength of a 6.1% year-over-year gain, but the overall U.S. market was much weaker than expected in registering a 10.6% drop.
Friday December 12, 2025 10:56 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28.
The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Monday December 15, 2025 3:05 pm PST by Juli Clover
Software from an iPhone prototype running an early build of iOS 26 leaked last week, giving us a glimpse at future Apple devices and iOS features. We recapped device codenames in our prior article, and now we have a list of some of the most notable feature flags that were found in the software code.
In some cases, it's obvious what the feature flags are referring to, while some are more...
Monday December 15, 2025 2:05 pm PST by Juli Clover
Last week, details about unreleased Apple devices and future iOS features were shared by Macworld. This week, we learned where the information came from, plus we have more findings from the leak.
As it turns out, an Apple prototype device running an early build of iOS 26 was sold, and the person who bought it shared the software. The OS has a version number of 23A5234w, and the first...
The first foldable iPhone will feature a series of design and hardware firsts for Apple, according to details shared by the Weibo leaker known as Digital Chat Station.
According to a new post, via machine translation, Apple is developing what the leaker describes as a "wide foldable" device, a term used to refer to a horizontally oriented, book-style foldable with a large internal display....
Monday December 15, 2025 4:23 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple is testing iOS 26.3, the next version of iOS 26 that will launch around January. Since iOS 26.3's testing is happening over the holidays, it is a smaller update with fewer features than we've seen in prior betas.
We've rounded up what's new so far, and we'll add to our list with subsequent betas if we come across any other features.
Transfer to Android
Apple is making it simpler...
Friday December 12, 2025 10:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. iOS 26.2 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation iPhone SE.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings >...
Monday December 15, 2025 7:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple released the AirPods Max on December 15, 2020, meaning the over-ear headphones launched five years ago today. While the AirPods Max were updated with a USB-C port and new color options last year, followed by support for lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio this year, the headphones lack some of the features that have been introduced for newer generations of the regular AirPods and the ...
Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Everyone who says that Macs are overpriced needs to take a good long look at these figures. Some of the cheaper alternatives (hardware and/or windows software) simply dont work as well as they should and, if something does not work as well as it should, then it could be free - its still no use.
Every Mac Ive bought since 1986 has made my eyes water price-wise (esp. when comparing it to cheaper alternatives available at the time) and yet every time Ive bought a new computer its been a Mac - not because Im a fan-boy (I am) but because it always does what I want it to do, and often more - from the moment I get it out of the box until long after I sell it. I used a PC just last week for a few hours. The UI was ugly, it crashed twice, it kept asking me stupid questions and then could not find my digital camera without a long, drawn out installation session.
The day Ballmer, Dell and various other people get their heads around the fact that lots and lots and lots of people, even in hard times, will pay that little bit more in return for almost 100% customer satisfaction, is the day the trend shown in this graph will be reversed.
Ballmer, however, wont ever get it - because the mans an idiot and a liability to Microsofts legacy.
Steve got it. Jony gets it. Bob (who will be missed) gets it. Phil gets it.
So yeah, we go out with our hard earned burning our wallets - and we get it.
Why ? If they did update the iMac and Mac Pro, they would probably get quite a few more sales, which is what the poster was hinting at. Why would you down vote him ?
Why not explain to us why you don't agree instead of cowardly down vote ?
I'm glad it's gone. Now you won't have perfectly reasonable posts being downvoted to hell and back simply because someone said something some other guy didn't like.
Such as "Android is a perfectly good platform, and competes quite well with iOS these days".
That's a true statement, but just mentioning Android in a positive light is enough to get people all riled up. If I said that within the first two pages of a thread, I would've been sporting a -15 for no other reason other than NUH UH UR DUM! I USE APPLE STUFF BECAUSE INNOVATION AND STEVE JOBS AND STUFF ITS THE BESTEST EVER -1".
Now if you disagree with something someone says, you have to make a post to air your disagreement. You can't just snipe at people passive aggressively anymore.
...though admittedly, this could end up being a double edged sword.
