Apple Mac shipments worldwide quarterly 2024-2026

Apple Mac shipments worldwide from 1st quarter 2024 to 1st quarter 2026

Apple no longer tells the world how many Macs it sells. Since fiscal 2018 the company has reported Mac revenue but not unit volumes, leaving the job of counting Macs to research firms such as IDC. This report tracks Apple worldwide Mac shipments, quarter by quarter, from the first quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2026, using IDC estimates to chart how the Mac performed through a period of recovery, strong growth, and a memory-shortage squeeze. The Mac story over these nine quarters is one of a premium product holding its own in a fast-moving, often turbulent personal computer market. The Mac neither soared nor stumbled, but advanced steadily through changing conditions. Its consistency was itself a kind of strength in a volatile market. Where rivals swung wildly, the Mac kept a steadier course throughout the period. That stability is a quiet advantage of Apple integrated approach to hardware and software.

The headline is one of solid growth. Apple shipped an estimated 22.9 million Macs in 2024 and 25.6 million in 2025, an eleven percent increase that outpaced the wider personal computer market. The revenue these units generated is tracked in our Apple Mac revenue analysis, while this report focuses on the volumes behind that revenue, and on how Apple fared against its rivals in the PC rankings.

The period was eventful. A steady stream of Apple silicon Macs, from M3 to M5 chips, drove healthy demand through most of 2024 and 2025, lifting Apple market share and growth above the industry average. But the year ended on a flatter note, as a global memory shortage and a surge of Windows upgrades, driven by the end of Windows 10 support, allowed rival brands to outgrow Apple in the final quarter of 2025.

A note on the data is essential here. Because Apple no longer reports Mac units, every figure in this report is an IDC estimate, produced through sampling rather than official disclosure. These estimates are widely cited and broadly reliable for trends, but they are not exact, and they lack the precision of Apple own former reporting. They are best read as informed approximations of the Mac unit business. For that reason, the trends in this report carry more weight than any single quarter exact figure, which should be treated with appropriate caution. The direction of travel is reliable even where the precise level is not. Trends, not exact counts, are what these estimates do best. Readers should weigh the overall direction far more than any single data point. The broad arc, not the decimal places, is where the real signal lies.

Apple Mac Shipments, Growth and PC Market Share, Q1 2024 - Q1 2026

The table lists Apple estimated Mac shipments for each quarter from the first quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2026, alongside the year-over-year growth where a prior-year comparison is available and Apple approximate share of the global PC market. The shipments column shows the familiar seasonal pattern, peaking in the holiday fourth quarter, while the growth column captures the strong run through 2025 and the flat finish. Sorting reveals both the peaks and the slowdown. The contrast between the strong middle quarters and the flat finish is the defining feature of the table. One glance shows where the momentum built and where it faded. The table compresses the entire period into a few revealing rows. Each line marks a stage in the Mac journey through these two years.

Strong Run, Flat Finish

Apple year-over-year growth tells the clearest story of the period. Through the first three quarters of 2025, Mac shipments grew strongly, with double-digit gains of around fifteen to twenty percent as Apple silicon Macs drew in upgraders and won enterprise customers. This was well above the growth of the overall PC market, marking Apple as one of the fastest-growing major vendors for much of the year. For three straight quarters, the Mac comfortably outgrew the larger Windows brands, narrowing a gap that had long seemed fixed. For a while, it looked as if the Mac might steadily close on the Windows leaders. That narrowing paused, but did not reverse, in the final quarter. The gap to the leaders remains, but the Mac trajectory still points the right way.

Then the momentum stalled. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Apple shipments were essentially flat year over year, growing just a fraction of a percent, even as the broader PC market surged by nearly ten percent. The contrast was stark, and it reflected a specific set of circumstances rather than any collapse in Mac demand, a dynamic that also shapes Apple broader results in our Apple total revenue analysis.

The flat fourth quarter had clear causes. Rival vendors were riding a wave of corporate upgrades tied to the end of Windows 10 support, and were stockpiling inventory ahead of a looming memory shortage. Apple, which launched only a standard M5 MacBook Pro that quarter rather than the high-end Pro and Max versions, did not share in that surge, and so its growth lagged the suddenly booming market. It was a case of rivals accelerating rather than Apple slowing, a distinction that matters for interpreting the numbers. Flat growth against a surging market is very different from an outright decline. Apple held its ground while others simply ran faster. That distinction is easy to miss in a single headline growth figure.

Climbing Toward Double Digits

Apple share of the global personal computer market rose over the period, a sign of underlying strength despite the volatility. From around eight percent in early 2024, Apple share climbed to roughly nine percent for the full year 2025, and reached into double digits in the strongest holiday quarters. The Mac was steadily, if slowly, claiming a larger slice of the PC market. Each year, the Mac has nudged its share a little higher, a quiet but persistent gain. Small annual gains compound into a meaningfully stronger position over time. The Mac share today is the result of years of patient progress.

This rising share is notable because Apple competes only at the premium end of the PC market, selling no budget machines at all. That it can gain share while charging some of the highest prices in the industry speaks to the strength of Apple silicon and the loyalty of its base, a premium strategy that mirrors its approach in phones, detailed in our Apple smartphone shipments analysis.

Apple share did dip in the final quarter of 2025, falling from around ten percent to nine percent as rival brands outgrew it. But this was a relative slip caused by surging competitors rather than falling Mac sales, and Apple full-year share still rose. The Mac long-term trajectory in the PC market remained upward, even through the fourth-quarter wobble. One soft quarter against surging competitors did little to alter the bigger picture of steady share gains. The full-year figures still pointed firmly in Apple favour.

Fourth by Volume, First in Profit

In the global PC rankings, Apple sits firmly in fourth place, behind the three big Windows vendors. Lenovo leads the market by a wide margin, followed by HP and Dell, with Apple in fourth and Asus close behind in fifth. The top three each ship well over ten million PCs in a strong quarter, while Apple ships around seven million at its seasonal peak, a hierarchy detailed in our PC and smartphone vendor share analysis.

Apple fourth-place position understates its commercial strength. Because it sells only premium machines at high prices, Apple captures a far larger share of PC industry revenue and profit than its unit ranking suggests. A Mac sale is worth far more than a typical Windows laptop sale, a gap that shows up clearly in the profit picture in our Apple net income analysis.

The competitive dynamics shifted late in the period. For most of 2025 Apple grew faster than the larger Windows vendors, narrowing the gap, but in the fourth quarter the three leaders surged on corporate upgrades while Apple held flat. The result left Apple still fourth, but growing more slowly than its rivals for the first time in several quarters, a reversal of the earlier trend. The competitive picture can shift quickly when market-wide forces favour one group of vendors over another. A single quarter rarely changes the underlying competitive order. Apple remained firmly fourth, with its premium position intact.

Solid, Market-Beating Growth

On an annual basis, the Mac unit business grew solidly across the period. IDC estimates Apple shipped around 21.9 million Macs in 2023, 22.9 million in 2024, and 25.6 million in 2025, a steady upward march. The 2025 total represented an eleven percent gain, the strongest annual growth in several years, and comfortably outpaced the broader PC market expansion. For a vendor selling only premium machines, beating a recovering mass market is a meaningful accomplishment. The Mac grew on the strength of its products, not on price cuts. Apple never chased volume by sacrificing its margins.

This annual growth reflects the success of the Apple silicon transition and a broadly recovering PC market. After the post-pandemic slump of 2022 and 2023, the personal computer market returned to growth in 2024 and accelerated in 2025, lifted by an aging installed base due for replacement and the Windows 11 transition, a recovery that also helped Apple, as explored in our Apple revenue by segment analysis.

Apple managed to grow faster than the recovering market in 2025, a notable achievement given that it competes only at the high end. The 25.6 million Macs shipped marked a high point for the Apple silicon era, demonstrating that the M-series chips and a refreshed lineup of laptops and desktops continued to win new buyers even as the company faced intensifying competition from the Windows giants tracked in our big tech revenue comparison analysis.

The Holiday Peak

Mac shipments follow a pronounced seasonal pattern across the year. The fourth calendar quarter, covering the October-to-December holiday season, is consistently the strongest, boosted by holiday demand and the autumn launch of new MacBook Pro models. The first quarter, by contrast, is typically the weakest, as demand cools after the holidays and buyers await spring product refreshes. This twin rhythm, a holiday surge and a winter lull, repeats almost every year with striking regularity. The pattern is so dependable it could almost be set by the calendar.

This seasonality is driven as much by Apple product calendar as by the holidays. Apple has tended to launch its most important new Macs, particularly high-end MacBook Pro models, in the autumn, concentrating demand into the fourth quarter. The pattern is similar to the launch-driven swings seen in Apple phone business, a rhythm visible in our Apple iPhone revenue analysis.

Understanding the seasonality is key to reading the quarterly figures correctly. A strong fourth quarter and a weaker first quarter are the norm, so the most meaningful comparisons are between the same quarter in different years rather than between consecutive quarters. The seasonal peak in the holidays has held consistently across the period, regardless of the year underlying momentum.

Outpacing, Then Lagging

Comparing Apple growth directly with the overall PC market reveals the story of the period in a single view. Through the first three quarters of 2025, Apple growth ran well ahead of the market, as Apple silicon demand outstripped the broader recovery. Apple was, for those quarters, one of the standout performers among the major PC vendors worldwide. Few rivals could match the Mac growth rate through the middle of 2025. For those months, Apple was among the engines of the PC recovery. Its momentum helped lift the wider market higher.

The fourth quarter inverted that relationship. The PC market surged on corporate upgrades and memory-shortage stockpiling, growing nearly ten percent, while Apple stayed flat. For the first time in the period, Apple grew more slowly than the market, a swing driven by market-wide forces affecting Windows vendors more than Apple, and one that rippled into the valuations tracked in our biggest companies by market value analysis.

Over the full period, though, Apple still grew faster than the market on an annual basis, with its eleven percent gain in 2025 beating the market eight percent. The fourth-quarter slowdown was a single-quarter divergence within a longer stretch of outperformance, and Apple finished the period having gained share over the year as a whole, despite the late stumble. The annual scorecard, more than any single quarter, tells the truer story of the Mac progress. Annual figures smooth out the seasonal and competitive noise.

The Mac Showcase

The holiday fourth quarter is the Mac showcase, and the data shows its growing importance. Apple shipped an estimated 5.9 million Macs in the fourth quarter of 2023, rising to 7.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, and holding at 7.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. The holiday quarter is comfortably the largest of the year, driven by gifts and new autumn Macs. No other quarter comes close to the volumes the Mac achieves between October and December.

The jump from 2023 to 2024 was substantial, reflecting the launch of the M4 MacBook Pro lineup and a recovering market. The flat result from 2024 to 2025 was more about the competition than about Apple, as rival vendors surged while Apple, launching only a standard M5 MacBook Pro, held steady at a high level rather than declining. Matching a record quarter, even without growth, is no small feat against intensifying competition.

That Apple could match its record holiday quarter despite launching a narrower lineup speaks to the underlying strength of Mac demand. Even without the high-end M5 Pro and Max chips that typically drive the biggest holiday volumes, Apple sustained its peak quarterly shipments, a sign of how broad and loyal the Mac customer base has become across the Apple silicon era. The platform has built a depth of demand that no single product launch defines. The Mac has become a steady, broad-based business rather than a launch-driven one.

The Underlying Signal

The first quarter offers a cleaner read on the Mac underlying trend, stripped of holiday distortion. Apple shipped an estimated 4.8 million Macs in the first quarter of 2024, rising to 5.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and an estimated 5.7 million in the first quarter of 2026. The steady year-over-year rise in this seasonally quiet quarter signals genuine underlying growth, echoing the unit trends in our global device shipments analysis.

The first-quarter figures are useful because they are less affected by the timing of product launches, which cluster in the autumn. A rising first-quarter baseline, from 4.8 to 5.5 to 5.7 million, suggests that the Mac core demand has been expanding steadily, independent of the holiday surges, a healthy sign for the business underlying trajectory. The quiet first quarter, free of launch noise, is often the most honest gauge of true demand.

The more modest rise into the first quarter of 2026 hints at the emerging headwinds. As a global memory shortage began to bite and the broader PC market faced a forecast downturn, Apple first-quarter growth cooled from the strong gains of a year earlier. The Mac was entering a more challenging environment, even as its longer-term trajectory remained positive. The cooling first-quarter growth was an early signal of the headwinds gathering for 2026.

Sawtooth and Slope

Plotting the full quarterly series reveals the Mac characteristic sawtooth: a strong fourth quarter, a sharp drop into the first quarter, and a steady build back through the year. Across the nine quarters, the peaks rise and the troughs lift, tracing an overall upward slope despite the seasonal zigzag that dominates the short-term picture. The sawtooth can obscure the underlying direction, which is why the trend matters more than any single swing.

The trend line confirms that, beneath the seasonal noise, the Mac unit business expanded over the period. Each holiday peak matched or exceeded the last, and each first-quarter trough sat higher than the one before, the signature of a business in steady growth. The Apple silicon era has, on this evidence, put the Mac on a firmly upward path.

The final data points hint at a plateau or pause, as memory shortages and a softening PC market forecast weigh on the outlook for 2026. Whether the Mac upward trend resumes or flattens will depend on how Apple navigates the component crunch and whether its next chips and models can reignite the strong growth seen through most of 2025, a question for the quarters ahead. How the Mac handles the memory crunch will shape its trajectory well into 2026 and beyond.

Across nine quarters, IDC estimates depict a Mac business in solid health: shipments rising from 22.9 million in 2024 to 25.6 million in 2025, market share climbing toward nine percent, and growth that outpaced the wider PC market for most of the period. The Apple silicon transition continued to win buyers, and the Mac strengthened its position as the premium choice in a recovering market, even while remaining the fourth-largest vendor by volume. The gap between Apple unit ranking and its revenue standing remains one of the most telling facts about the Mac.

The period ended on a cautious note, with a flat holiday quarter and a looming memory shortage threatening the wider PC market in 2026. Yet the Mac longer-term trajectory remained clearly upward, anchored by Apple silicon, a loyal base, and a steady cadence of new models. With Apple no longer reporting units, the precise figures must come from IDC estimates, but the broad story they tell is of a Mac business that, two decades into the modern era, is still quietly growing, much like the iPhone lineup in our iPhone 15 adoption by model analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions: Apple Mac Shipments