Thomas Alsop
Research expert covering the global hardware industry
Apple Mac - statistics & facts
Not to lose out in the artificial intelligence (AI) race, Apple is expected to reveal new Macs in late 2024 that will feature powerful M4 chips. These processors will be designed with AI in mind, able to handle the demanding workloads associated with this technology. Before that though, in March 2024, Apple released the new 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air models, powered by the latest M3 chip. With a retail price in the United States starting from 1,099 and 1,299 U.S. dollars, respectively, the devices are the latest additions to the Apple Mac family.
A need to revitalize the Apple Mac lineup
Apple Mac is the company’s line of personal computers running macOS and includes the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. In 2023, Apple generated 29.4 billion U.S. dollars in revenue from sales of Mac products, a sizeable reduction from the 40.2 billion U.S. dollars recorded in the previous year. The Mac's share of Apple's total revenue stood below ten percent, lower than the share occupied by the company’s iPhone and growing services segments. Revamping the Mac lineup is a constant challenge for the company: in November 2023, Apple announced the latest versions of its popular 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro devices, sporting the company’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips.Stiff competition for Apple in the PC market
In 2023, Apple Mac shipments reached 21.9 million units, less than 10 percent of the total number of PC shipments observed across the entire market. In the same year, global PC shipments amounted to 241.9 million units, a 15 percent fall compared to the previous year as the industry battled economic headwinds and a period of inventory rebalance. Lenovo, HP, and Dell are ahead of Apple in the global PC market. As a collective, these three companies account for around 60 percent of the world’s PC shipments.M4 chips with greater AI capabilities
The emergence of AI applications such as text and image generation, and other machine learning tasks, are putting greater pressure on computer systems. As a result, Apple and the other leading PC vendors are further pursuing the development of AI-capable PCs, devices that can handle AI tasks on-device. Dedicated processors for handling AI-related workloads will become a fixture onboard PCs, notably advancements in neural processing unit (NPU) chips. As such, Apple’s M4 chip is likely to receive an NPU upgrade, another frontier in the AI chips race. A move that Apple hopes confirms that its Mac products can still compete with the best devices on the market.
