Analysts pull Mac sales numbers out of a hat
IDC, Gartner can't agree on whether U.S. sales are up or down at Apple — Computerworld - Apple's Mac sales are up. Unless they're down, say analysts. — Second-quarter estimates of Mac sales by Gartner Inc. and IDC split yesterday …
Context & Ripple Effects
The split between Gartner and IDC over second-quarter Mac sales reopens an argument from six months ago, when December's 'Mac sales down?' headlines themselves came under challenge. Both firms track the same market, yet IDC's early estimates put Apple falling from fourth to fifth place in U.S. computer sales while Gartner reads the quarter in the opposite direction.
The ambiguity matters beyond the scoreboard: it lands in the middle of Apple's price-perception fight with Microsoft, whose Laptop Hunters campaign Apple has reportedly demanded be stopped. With the trackers contradicting each other, neither side can point to independent data proving momentum either way.
First-order effects
- Anyone benchmarking Apple's U.S. PC standing for the spring quarter gets two contradictory answers — IDC's early estimates show a drop to fifth place, Gartner's do not — leaving Apple's own reported figures as the only arbiter.
- Financial press coverage of the quarter inherits the confusion, since syndicated tracker numbers are the standard proxy used before and between Apple's own disclosures.
Second-order effects
- The credibility cost falls on the trackers themselves: when the two leading firms publish opposite directions for the same vendor and quarter, buyers of syndicated research have reason to discount share-league tables for Apple specifically.
- In the pricing war with Microsoft, ambiguous shipment data lets both camps claim the narrative — Apple can cite any figure that flatters it, and so can its critics.
Third-order effects
- If single-firm shipment estimates keep diverging on Apple, market-share league tables lose authority as the industry's ranking mechanism, shifting interpretive weight toward vendor-reported results and methodology transparency at the research firms.
The trend: PC-market tracking keeps splitting over Apple's trajectory — a recurring estimation gap that makes vendor disclosures the de facto tiebreaker.