Apple Breaks Record | 6.5 Million MacBooks Sold Last Quarter

It looks like Tim Cook wasn’t kidding when he told investors last week that the new M1 MacBook Air was driving Apple to new highs, with a new analyst report suggesting that Apple’s extremely powerful entry-level laptop has just vaulted the company into fourth place in global laptop sales.

Although Apple no longer releases unit sales of its products, the company reported record-breaking Mac sales for the months of July, August, and September, reaching a new high of $9.2 billion. Apple’s Chief Financial Officer, Luca Maestri, shared that this has just continued the trend that Apple has seen over the last 15 months, and Tim Cook said that the M1 MacBook Air saw “incredibly strong demand.”

Now, thanks to a report by Strategy Analytics, we’re getting a much better idea of exactly how significant that is in the context of the bigger picture.

Specifically, the market research firm estimates that Apple sold 6.5 million MacBooks last quarter. This means it actually saw a 10% growth in unit sales and now also boasts a 10% global market share of laptops.

This is particularly interesting considering that Apple’s own revenue from Mac sales only grew by a mere 1.6% from the same period last year. However, this also points to the lower-priced MacBook Air being the main driver of these new sales.

Further, Strategy Analytics also notes that “higher discounts on premium products like MacBook Air” helped to encourage more consumer spending, suggesting it was the entry-level model that had the most appeal.

This explains why Apple could see a 10% growth in the number of Macs sold while only seeing a 1.6% increase in revenue. However, we also don’t know what Apple’s profit margins are. It’s equally possible that it still pocketed far more of the revenue from this year’s Mac sales than it did last year, particularly because it no longer has to buy its main chips from Intel.

The Leaderboard

Ultimately, Apple’s dramatic increase in sales puts it in fourth place among the entire slate of laptop and notebook vendors, which is no small feat considering the PC behemoths it’s competing against.

After all, as popular as the Mac is among consumers, Windows-based PCs still dominate the business landscape. Even in an era of working from home, some employees are still forced to go with company-mandated platforms.

So, it’s not a big surprise that Lenovo, HP, and Dell still came out well ahead of Apple. However, even among these, Dell was the only one to see any significant growth, with 12.2 million laptops sold during the quarter, which works out to a 50% increase over last year.

By contrast, Lenovo only grew its sales by about 5%, capturing 23% of the market, while HP went the other way, with a 5% decrease over last year’s numbers. Asus entered the leaderboard this time around, coming in just behind Apple with 5.1 million units sold.

Other laptop vendors accounted for 13.5 million units sold, making up the remaining 20% of the market. This means that among the big five, Apple actually accounted for 12% of the laptops sold globally.

Notably, Apple also reported that it could have made $6 billion more last quarter if it weren’t for the global chip shortage. Of course, these constraints likely affected other laptop makers as well, but it’s hard to say for certain how the numbers would have played out if everyone had been able to keep up with demand.

It’s also worth noting that the shipments of laptops from all vendors increased by only 8% overall last year. So Apple’s MacBook sales actually outpaced the rest of the industry overall. This was also before the announcement of the insanely powerful new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro lineup, so there’s every reason to assume that Apple’s meteoric rise will continue into this quarter and well beyond.