DURING a recent visit to an Apple outlet, I thought that if I had to buy a laptop today, it would be the 13-inch MacBook Air.
To put this in perspective, I have long ruled out a return to Windows for a variety of reasons. Take your pick: Windows 10, an intrusive operating system that some have called spyware; vulnerability to viruses and other malicious software; crazy licensing schemes aimed at making users pay and pay; and the tendency among manufacturers to load Windows laptops with crapware that just takes up space on the hard drive and annoys users by nagging them to buy the full version of a program they never wanted in the first place.
If there were a Linux laptop on the market, I’d probably consider it, but PC retailers in this country seem intractably unwilling to offer this option to consumers here.
So, I’m stuck with Apple, and the 13-inch MacBook Air seems to be the logical choice. It has a larger screen than the MacBook Air 11-inch that I’ve been using for the last two years, and 8GB of memory—twice as much as I had on my current laptop, and costs only P5,000 more than the 11-inch model. It’s also more attractive to me than Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook, which costs more and has no standard USB port—a real deal breaker for me.
But the problem for Apple is that users like me are unlikely to buy a replacement laptop unless something goes terribly wrong with our current one—or if we suddenly win the lottery and have excess cash on our hands. Moreover, the “upgrade” path to the 12-inch MacBook just isn’t all that compelling or attractive.
This kind of situation might explain why, after bucking the general malaise of the PC market for so long, Apple is finally feeling the pinch on its Mac line, as detailed recently by market researchers IDC and Gartner in their second quarter reports.
IDC reported that PC shipments in the second quarter totaled 62.4 million units, a year-on-year decline of 4.5 percent. Apple sales in the same quarter, however, came to only 4.42 million units, a year-on-year decline of 8.3 percent—a sharper drop than what the entire industry experienced.
In contrast, three of the top five PC companies—HP, Dell and Asus—posted volume gains year-on-year, while market leader Lenovo, saw its shipments drop by just 2.3 percent.
At the same time, IDC said, Apple’s market share dropped from 7.4 percent in the second quarter last year to 7.1 percent in the same period this year.
“Apple continues to face an increasingly competitive market as it awaits a refresh of its PC lineup. As a result, shipments eaxperienced a decline from last year,” IDC said.
Gartner reported similar figures.
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 64.3 million units in the second quarter of 2016, a 5.2 percent decline from the second quarter of 2015, Gartner said. This was the seventh consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines, but Gartner analysts said the market is showing some signs of improvement—just not from Apple.
Apple computer shipments came to 4.56 million units in the second quarter, Gartner said, 4.9 percent lower than its sales in the equivalent quarter in 2015. Again, HP, Dell and Asus posted gains, while Lenovo experienced a slight 2.2 percent decline.
Observers say one reason for the recent declines is that Apple has not refreshed its Mac line in a while,” writes Kif Leswing in Business Insider. “Apple hasn’t updated its line of MacBook Pros or MacBook Airs since last spring, over a year ago.
“And neither model has had a full redesign in years. The last time the physical look of Apple’s popular MacBook Air changed was six years ago, in 2010. The MacBook Pro has looked the same since 2012…
“Apple has one new laptop model, the MacBook, a skinny and light computer, but that’s not an easy sell for many because it only has one USB port.”
But Jonny Evans, writing in Computerworld, says even new Macs might not be enough to give the momentum back to Apple, given the industry’s shift to more mobile devices. That’s none too reassuring to users who still prefer a full laptop to a tablet or large smart phone to get their work done. Chin Wong
Column archives and blog at: http://www.chinwong.com