Our survey of analysts suggests that Apple is set to report its first 4 million Mac quarter
In the Gartner report issued this week, U.S. sales of Apple’s (AAPL) Macintosh computers grew 23% year over year last quarter while overall PC sales (even including the Mac) fell 6.6%.
That’s been the story for much of 2010: PC sales weak, Macintosh sales strong.
But the Mac has been on its own trajectory for some time, boosted by a steady flow of refreshed products — iMac, MacBook, MacBook Air — and by the magnetic pull of the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, which keep drawing new customers into the Apple Store.
Whether that trajectory slowed or accelerated in the Christmas quarter — usually Apple’s strongest — is one of the questions that will be answered definitively next Tuesday, when the company reports its fiscal Q1 2011 earnings.
Meanwhile, we’ve polled three dozen analysts for their Mac unit sales predictions. The average of their estimates — 4.15 million, posted in the chart above — would represent a slight diminution in the Mac’s sales growth.
But there was, as usual, a sizable gap between the most optimistic estimate (4.49 million by Apple Finance Board’s Alexis Cabot) and the most pessimistic (3.6 million from UBS’s Maynard Um).
Below: The numbers we’ve gathered so far. The Deagol rating in the fourth column is a measure of each analysts accuracy over the past two or three quarters, with 1 the highest and 30 the lowest. (See here for an explanation for how it was derived.)
Further below, a chart of the breakdown between desktop and laptop unit sales over the past three years. You can see at a glance how important to Apple the MacBook line has become.
| Analyst, affiliation | Mac sales (millions) | Date of est. | Deagol rank |
| Alexis Cabot, Apple Finance Board | 4.49 | 12/23/10 | 8 |
| Dennis Hildebrand, Apple’s Gold | 4.47 | 12/28/10 | 25 |
| Mark Beauch, Apple Finance Board | 4.45 | 12/27/10 | NA |
| Nicolae Mihalache, Traderhood | 4.35 | 12/30/10 | 30 |
| Robert Paul Leitao, Apple Finance Board | 4.35 | 1/2/11 | 11 |
| Horace Dediu, Asymco | 4.30 | 12/29/10 | 1 |
| Jeff Fosberg, Apple Finance Board | 4.30 | 12/29/10 | 13 |
| Turley Muller, Financial Alchemist | 4.30 | 12/29/10 | 4 |
| Daniel Tello, Deagol’s AAPL Model | 4.30 | 12/23/10 | 3 |
| Patrick Smellie, Apple Finance Board | 4.28 | 12/29/10 | 24 |
| Matthew Hoffman, Cowen & Co. | 4.27 | 12/16/10 | 33 |
| Mark Moskowitz, J.P. Morgan | 4.26 | 12/16/10 | 32 |
| Doug Reid, Stifel Nicholaus | 4.26 | 1/10/11 | 23 |
| Mike Abramsky, RBC Capital | 4.23 | 1/12/11 | 6 |
| T. Michael Walkley, Canaccord Genuity | 4.20 | 1/4/11 | 31 |
| Shaw Wu, Kaufman Bros. | 4.20 | 12/16/10 | 34 |
| Chris Whitmore, Deutsche Bank | 4.20 | 1/3/11 | 14 |
| Yair Reiner, Oppenheimer | 4.19 | 1/3/11 | 9 |
| Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray | 4.17 | 11/29/10 | 28 |
| Tavis McCourt, Morgan Keegan | 4.16 | 12/30/10 | 36 |
| Bill Shope, Goldman Sachs | 4.12 | 12/12/10 | 19 |
| Richard Gardner, Citigroup | 4.10 | 1/13/11 | 21 |
| Rajesh Ghai, Think Equity | 4.09 | 11/29/10 | 35 |
| Charlie Wolf, Needham | 4.06 | 10/19/10 | NA |
| Jeff Fidacaro, Susquehanna | 4.06 | 11/29/10 | 17 |
| William Power, Baird | 4.05 | 11/4/10 | NA |
| Ben Reitzes, Barclays Capital | 4.01 | 1/12/11 | 18 |
| Brian Marshall, Gleacher & Co. | 4.01 | 12/29/10 | 27 |
| Hendi Susanto, Gabelli & Co. | 4.00 | 12/17/10 | NA |
| Scott Craig, Merrill Lynch | 4.00 | 12/9/10 | 22 |
| Kathryn Huberty, Morgan Stanley | 4.00 | 12/29/10 | 29 |
| Nehal Chokshi, Technology Insights | 3.99 | 1/4/11 | 10 |
| Brian White, Ticonderoga | 3.96 | 1/4/11 | NA |
| William Fearnley, Janney Capital | 3.84 | 1/12/11 | 15 |
| Daniel Ernst, Hudson Square | 3.80 | 12/29/10 | 40 |
| Maynard Um, UBS | 3.60 | 12/28/10 | 20 |
. . .
In Q4 2010, five analysts predicted — incorrectly — that Apple had just sold 4 million Macs. This time, curiously, all but five expect Apple to report sales of 4 million or more.
See also:
- Did Apple sell 4 million Macs in Q4?
- How many iPads has Apple really sold?
- Let’s talk about the Mac for a change (Q3)
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]