The latest research report that was written by Trendforce seeks to explore the cause of why Apple's market share in laptop dropped by a whopping 24.3% in Q3, which led the company to be secured in the fifth place rather than fourth as they once were. Apple has a 7.9% laptop market share in Q3 2018, in contrast, the share was 10.4% a year ago, and it happens in a time that the overall market demand suppose to be increasing.
Trendforce notes that even though Apple has adopted a much powerful new processor in its high-end MacBook Pro, the performance improvements are not able to draw consumers' attention to this machine but rather was shocked by the high price tags. Indeed, Apple was unable to catch up other laptop makers, behind HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Dell.
Apple and Acer showed similar performances in Q3, shipping 3.36 million and 3.35 million units respectively. Compared with their performances in the same period of last year, however, Apple post significant declines but Acer registered growth. Apple this year adopted a new processor in its high-end MacBook Pro with OLED Bar, but the performance improvements hardly attract more customers due to the series’ high price tags.Some speculate that perhaps people were waiting for the new MacBook Air, which is already on sale, a number of customers were hoping to hands-on the new Mac mini. In the comment section of many tech blogs, it seems that the price was the big reason that holds the users back, users' blames also goes to the lack of new technologies as well as the issues it had with Butterfly Keyboard.