US Mac market share grew 22% in Q1, likely helped by new MacBook Air models

A new market intelligence report says that US Mac market share grew by 22.4% in the first quarter of the year, dwarfing the 5% growth for the US PC market as a whole.

It’s likely that the launch of the new MacBook Air models back in March played a key role in this growth …

US PC market growth

Canalys estimates that total growth in PC shipments to the US was 5%.

PC (excluding tablets) shipments to the United States grew 5% year-on-year to 14.8 million units in Q1 2024. The consumer and SMB segments were the key growth drivers, both witnessing shipment increases above 9% year-on-year in the first quarter.

Looking ahead to next year, the company expects growth to increase to 8%, citing two reasons for optimism this year and next.

First, new enterprise sales prompted by Microsoft’s announcement that support for Windows 10 is ending.

Growth in small and medium businesses indicates that the anticipated refresh brought by the Windows 10 end-of-life is underway. With enterprise customers set to follow suit, the near-term outlook for the market remains highly positive.

Second, the desire to take advantage of new AI capabilities driving sales of new PCs and Apple Silicon Macs.

This timing also coincides with greater availability of on-device AI capabilities in the market, with new products and user experiences set to excite consumers and businesses across both the Windows and Apple ecosystems. The US is forecasted to be a leader in the adoption of AI-capable PCs as vendors and their partners prioritize go-to-market efforts to capitalize on the significant opportunity to upgrade customers to premium devices.

Mac shipments are estimated to have grown from 1.7M in the first quarter of 2023 to 2.1M in the same quarter this year. That represents year-on-year growth of 22%, giving Apple a 14.2% share of the US PC market.

The launch of the new M3-powered MacBook Air models in March were likely one of the main reasons for this growth.

Looking ahead, Apple Intelligence features launching on Mac later this year will require an Apple Silicon machine, likely prompting a significant slice of Intel Mac users to upgrade.

Photo: Apple