Apple PC shipments plunge steepest among major brands

Downward trend: A rickshaw makes its way down a road in Mumbai, India, with an Apple billboard in the background. The company also experienced declines in smartphone shipments as an accumulating glut among memory chip suppliers takes its toll. — Bloomberg

NEW YORK: Apple Inc’s personal computer (PC) shipments declined by 40.5% in the first quarter, the worst drop since the final three months of 2000, after sluggish demand and an industry-wide glut hit the Mac maker especially hard.

Shipments by all PC makers combined slumped 29% to 56.9 million units, falling below the levels of early 2019 as the demand surge driven by pandemic-era remote work evaporated, according to the Independent Distribution Consultant’s (IDC) latest report. Among the market leaders, Lenovo Group Ltd and Dell Technologies Inc registered drops of more than 30%, while HP Inc was down 24.2%.