Recently released Canalys data shows the global PC (as in “personal computer” not just Windows machines) market climbed 12.7% from a year ago to reach 79.2 million units in the this quarter of 2020 as it continued to benefit hugely from the COVID-19 crisis. And Mac sales soared 13.2% year-over-year.
The third quarter growth is the highest growth the market has seen in the past 10 years, according to Canalys. After a weak first quarter, the recovery in the second quarter continued into quarter three of this year, and it even grew on top of a strong market the previous year, notes the research group.
Global notebook shipments touched 64 million units (almost as much as the record high of the fourth quarter of 2011 when notebook shipments were 64.6 million) as demand continued to surge due to second waves of COVID-19 in many countries and companies continued to invest in longer-term transitions to remote working. Shipments of notebooks and mobile workstations grew 28.3% year-on-year. This contrasted with desktop and desktop workstations, which saw shipments shrink by 26.%
Lenovo regained top spot in the PC market in Q3 with growth of 11.4% and shipments surpassed the 19 million mark. HP posted a similarly impressive growth of 11.9% to secure second place with 18.7 million units shipped. Dell, in third, suffered a small decline of 0.5% in shipments from a year ago. Apple and Acer rounded out the top five rankings, posting stellar growth of 13.2% and 15.0% respectively.
Apple sold about 6.4 million Macs in quarter three of 2020. That compares to 5.6 million in the year-ago quarter. (Note that Canalys doesn’t include iPads in its tally of personal computers; if it did, Apple’s market share would be even higher).
