Apple “losing ground on rival PC manufacturers in U.S. market”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Apple is losing ground on rival PC manufacturers in the U.S. computing market, new figures suggest, according to Digital Spy.

Data from IDC indicates that the Mac's market share shrunk from 10.9% last year to 10% in the second quarter of 2014, with year-on-year growth down by 1.7%.

The figures leave Apple in fourth place in the overall PC market, behind HP, Dell and Lenovo, with the first two holding around a quarter of the market each.

Chinese manufacturer Lenovo reported an impressive 20.3% growth during the last fiscal quarter, leaving it with a 11.5% stake in the U.S. market.

IDC's figures also suggest that the PC market's global decline is showing signs of slowing, with the year-on-year downturn of 1.7% the smallest reported since 2012.

"The better-than-expected results seem to arise from two places. One encouraging factor was a good intake of lower-end systems, including Chromebooks, which coincides with the recent slowing in tablet growth and perhaps signals the beginning of some stabilisation on the consumer side," said IDC's Jay Chou.

"In addition, a sizeable number of PCs are still running Windows XP and the impetus to upgrade them continued to boost shipments in the second quarter."

Fellow analyst Gartner recently claimed that the tablet market is on course to overtake the PC sector by next year.