Ask Paul: October 31 ⭐

Happy Friday, Happy Halloween, y feliz Día de Muertos! It’s that time of the year when he comes home, and, apparently, when it’s time to debate computing platforms and figure out which one is best for us. So let’s dive in.
? Mac vs. PC vs. iPad vs. the world
helix2301 asks:

Mac sales have been better than iPad sales as of late. My question is, where do Mac sales fall in the scope of PC sales? Is it on par with other vendors like Lenovo or Dell? Just wondering if you were comparing PC to Mac, where Apple kind of falls.

I try to call out Mac market share (sales, or unit sales) whenever I publish an article about PC sales, as (what are now estimates of) Mac sales are part of that. And it’s odd to me that this number isn’t higher, given the popularity of the iPhone or even Apple in general. But the most recent number I have, which IDC only, is 6.8 million units sold in Q3 2025, which is about 9 percent of the market. IDC reported that Lenovo sold 19.4 million PCs in that quarter, compared to 15 million for HP and 10.1 million for Dell.

For full-year 2024, using averages of the estimates provided by IDC and Gartner, the total market was 251 million units, with Lenovo (62 million units), HP (53 million), Dell (39 million), and Apple (22.7 million) at the top, so Apple’s market share for 2024 was 8.9 million.

A couple of quick points on Mac market share.

It hasn’t changed much over the years, which I (again) find odd. Over the past several years, 2023 and back, Mac market share ranged from 7.5 percent to 8.7 percent, but not in a clean line, with a few downward changes. These figures are higher in places like the U.S. and western Europe, of course, but I’m surprised this isn’t over 10 percent worldwide.

One could always make an argument that the iPad is a PC alternative, and with iPadOS 26, you’re even better positioned for that. If you were to include those sales, Apple’s share of the market would be much higher. Granted, the iPad still isn’t a Mac. But it’s an interesting exercise. Using an AI summary from Brave Search, which I think we can all agree is 100 percent accurate, Apple sold 71.1 million, 57.8 million, 61.8 million, 49.5 million, and 52.1 million iPads in each of the past five years (2020 through 2024), and though that is trending downward, the first two are pandemic era and those are all big numbers regardless. Very big numbers: Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, sold 59 million, 70.6 million, 83 million, 69 million, 59.4 million units over those same five years. So in that sense, Apple is actually the biggest computer maker in the world. Sort of. Obviously, most iPad users don’t use an iPad like a Mac or PC laptop.
?️ No, Virginia, Microsoft Cloud does not exist
OldITPro2000 asks:

Thank you for doing the earnings call breakdown each quarter. Wait, let me reword that more appropriately: Congratulations on another excellent quarterly analysis! Your insights are fungible and planet scale!

Ha! Thank you, as...