The M3 Will Turn the Mac Around
While Mac sales were down significantly this past quarter, Cook doesn’t expect this to be the start of a trend. He told CNBC that the personal computer market is “challenging” right now but believes that the new M3 Mac lineup that Apple debuted during its Scary Fast event earlier this week will help turn things around during the holiday quarter.
“I think the Mac is going to have a significantly better quarter in the December quarter. We’ve got the M3, we’ve got the new products, and we don’t have the compare phenomenon on a year-over-year basis.”
Mac sales have also done atypically well over the past few years, with a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic as more folks needed to equip themselves properly to work or attend classes from home. Sales spiked nearly 30% in the summer of 2020 and then saw another 25% increase year-over-year during the same period in 2022.
While the summer of 2020 was primarily a pandemic-related aberration as Apple had released few new compelling products during the first part of that year, the Q4 2022 increase was likely the result of the newly redesigned M2 MacBook Air that took the entry-level laptop market by storm and drove quite a few upgrades.
By comparison, this year’s Mac lineup has been more niche. The 15-inch M2 MacBook Air was never expected to be nearly as popular as the 13-inch model, and the M2-powered Mac Studio and Mac Pro are for an entirely different audience.