IDC: Mac shipments fell 11 per cent in the third quarter, as the PC market dropped 20 per centIDC: Mac shipments fell 11 per cent in the third quarter, as the PC market dropped 20 per cent

Apple shipped 5.9 million Macs in the third quarter of 2026, 11.3 per cent fewer than a year earlier, according to preliminary figures IDC published on 8 October.

The whole PC market fell much faster. IDC counts 62.7 million PCs shipped worldwide in the quarter, down 20.1 per cent year on year and 9.1 per cent from the second quarter. Because Apple fell by about half as much as the market, its share of shipments rose from 8.5 to 9.5 per cent, and it stays fourth among PC makers.

How Apple compares with Lenovo, HP and Dell

IDC's table shows the three largest makers all falling faster than the market and, between them, giving up 4.2 points of share. HP had the steepest fall of the top five. ASUS had the smallest.

The figures cover desktops, notebooks and workstations. IDC's PC count leaves out tablets, so the iPad is not in it.

Why did PC shipments fall so far?

IDC's explanation is timing. Makers and retailers bought heavily in the first half of the year to get ahead of price rises driven by memory costs, which it ties to the build-out of AI data centres. That stock was still being sold through in the third quarter, so the usual seasonal lift, when the third quarter outsells the second, did not happen. Jitesh Ubrani, IDC's research director for consumer devices, said retailers may run promotions to clear stock, but that prices will remain elevated.

A separate Omdia release on the US market describes the same pull-forward from the other side. It says US PC shipments grew 1.0 per cent in the second quarter as retailers stocked up, that the average US selling price passed $1,000 for the first time, and that it expects US shipments to fall 18.4 per cent in the second half of 2026.

IDC has also revised its earlier quarter. In July it put the second quarter's fall at 4.9 per cent, with Mac shipments up 10 per cent, as Asymco recorded at the time. Its new release gives the second quarter's fall as 3.8 per cent.

Our take

Two things are true at once, and the headline numbers hide one of them. Apple is losing less than anyone else in the top four, which is the share story IDC leads with. It is also shipping fewer Macs: 5.9 million against 6.7 million a year ago, and against roughly 6.7 million in the second quarter, when IDC had Apple growing. A gain in share in a market that shrank by a fifth is a smaller slice of a much smaller pie getting relatively larger.

The reason Apple holds up better is the same one we saw in phones. When Counterpoint put the iPhone 18 Pro top in China during launch week, rising memory costs were hitting cheap handsets hardest, and Omdia's US figures show the same pattern in PCs, with sales of machines under $699 falling while those over $1,500 grew. Apple sells almost nothing at the bottom of the market. It has passed on some of the cost, too: the M6 Mac mini starts at $899, against $599 for the model it replaced, and Apple raised the cheapest iPad from $349 to $449 in June.

These are preliminary shipment estimates, not sales, and IDC's own revision of the second quarter shows how much they can move. Apple reports Mac revenue, not units, on 2 November, in John Ternus's first results as chief executive, and that figure is the one to check this against. APPDOOK's reading is that the last three months of the year will look better for Apple than for the market, with new MacBook Pros and an M6 iMac reported for late October, but that IDC's warning about the economy applies to Apple's buyers as much as anyone's.