MacBook Air sales boost Apple’s share of UK PC market

Posted on February 8th, 2011 Dan Mather

Strong sales of its latest MacBook Air have helped Apple overtake several of its rivals and rank at number five in the list of the largest suppliers of PCs to the UK market.

Still behind HP, Acer, Dell and Toshiba, Apple now accounts for just over six per cent of all the personal computers sold in the UK, having increased that share from 5.4 per cent at the end of 2009, Gartner reports.

The research firm’s figures show that there were fewer PCs sold across the country in the final three months of last year, compared with the same period in 2009, but Apple’s MacBook Air managed to buck a generally downward trend.

Despite a difficult Christmas in terms of sales of traditional PCs, there were 5.4 per cent more laptops, desktops and netbooks sold over the course of 2010, compared with 2009.

Acer’s share of the UK PC market was reportedly cut from 19.1 per cent at the end of 2009 to 16.7 per cent at the end of last year, which Gartner puts down to weaker demand for some of its leading netbooks.

Reflecting on the recent findings, Gartner’s research director Ranjit Atwal said: “Uncertain economic factors and unemployment influenced consumers to delay or be conservative with discretionary spending.”

The consumer technology market worldwide, as well as in the UK, is currently being shaken up by the impending introduction of various tablet PCs from the likes of Motorola, Samsung and LG.

Apple was the first to launch a truly popular slate device in the shape of the iPad, of which the company sold 7.3 million worldwide in the final quarter of 2010. Around four million Macs were sold during the same period.

Netbooks, New Laptops, News, Tablets Acer, Apple, Dell, desktops, HP, iPads, Laptops, LG, macbook air, motorola, Netbooks, Samsung, Toshiba

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