Mac sales fall 12 percent in second-biggest downturn since '07

Apple yesterday said it sold 4 million Macs in the March quarter, a 12 percent decline from the same period the year before, and a larger contraction than for the personal computer business as a whole. The year-over-year downturn in Mac sales was the second straight down quarter, and excepting a brutal 22 percent drop at the end of 2012, the largest since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. Analysts at IDC and Gartner earlier this month pegged the continued contraction of the PC industry at 11.5 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively. Both also missed the actual Mac number for the quarter in their forecasts for Apple, overestimating by 11 percent to 13 percent: IDC had tapped shipments at 4.5 million, while Gartner said 4.6 million. Apple had been on an extended streak of besting the PC average, with sometimes impressive gains during the four-years-and-counting slump of the overall market.