Apple Sells 4.1M Macs In Q1 2013, Down 21% Year Over Year And 16% From Previous Quarter

Apple’s Mac sales for its first fiscal quarter of 2013 were not very impressive, despite high holiday appetite among consumers and new models. The company moved 4.1 million Macs in total, including notebooks like the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro released last quarter, and all-in-ones like its refreshed iMac line, which also made their first appearance during Apple’s fiscal Q1.

Apple introduced a slew of new Macs during the past quarter, in fact, including brand new 21.5 and 27-inch iMacs with ultra thin new cases, a brand new Mac mini with faster processors and a quad core options, as well as the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the second in Apple’s line of notebooks with HiDPI displays capable of smooth on-screen graphics rendering that makes digital graphics mostly indistinguishable from high-quality prints. Despite the new hardware, Mac sales dipped year over year after experiencing decent growth last holiday season.

Mac sales missed the previous quarter’s 4.9 million Macs by 800,000 units, or 16 percent, and also fell short of 2011 holiday sales of Apple’s computer hardware by 1.1 million devices, missing last year’s sales by 21 percent. Macs may make up a relatively small portion of Apple’s overall sales, but the numbers this time around show that interest is dwindling fast in traditional computing form factor.

It should be noted that while Apple’s newest Macs were introduced during the quarter, many of them weren’t actually available for most of the reporting period, including the 27-inch iMac, which only began shipping out to customers in mid-December. Still, the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and revamped Mac mini were out and out and available around a month into the quarter. Supply issues might be to blame for the low numbers, but it could also be that more users are opting to buy iPads, since iPad sales were up year over year.

Apple also had one less week in this reporting period versus the year ago quarter, with 13 weeks instead of 14, so that could account for some of the variance, but not all. And while unit sales dropped over 20 percent, revenue from those sales took a lesser hit – it declined 16 percent from fiscal Q1 2012.