If Apple’s latest earnings report is any indication, Mac is a big part of Cupertino’s business, and business is good.
Apple reported this week that it finished up its first quarter 2014 by raking in $57.6 billion, with $13.072 billion of that counted as profit. During the same time frame a year ago, Apple pulled in $54.5 billion in revenue, with $13.078 in profit. Though revenue increased, profit actually decreased ever so slightly. Nevertheless, the numbers are quite impressive.
So, what propelled Apple to make so much cheddar in the last quarter? Cupertino partly has Mac sales to thank for its good fortunes. Spearheaded by the popularity of its iMac all in one desktop computer, as well as its MacBook Air super-lightweight notebooks, sales of Macs rose nearly one fifth when compared with the same quarter a year earlier; 19 percent to be exact. What’s more, this surge in sales has continued a long winning streak for Apple’s Mac computers, which has seen Macs gain ground in 30 of the last 31 quarters – impressive given the decline of PC shipments worldwide.
It’s worth noting, however, that while Gartner indicated a 6.9 percent decrease in PC shipments in fourth quarter 2013 when compared with the same period in 2012, both Dell and Lenovo’s shipments rose significantly. Meanwhile, HP, Acer, and Asus’s PC shipments dropped significantly during the same period.
These trends make us wonder whether we’re headed not towards a necessarily post-PC/desktop computer world, but a world populated by fewer manufacturers overall. Either way, it’ll be years until that question can be answered clearly and plainly.
What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.
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