Last Friday Patently Apple posted a report titled "In Q3, PC Shipments broke a 10-Year Growth Record with Apple enjoying Healthy Growth While Dell took a major Tumble." The statistics from Canalys were positive for Apple at 13.2% growth year-over-year. However, IDC's PC Shipments report has just been published for Q3 and the numbers  blow away those published by Canalys last week.  In fact, Apple delivered the best PC growth for the quarter over their top competitors. Better yet Apple more than tripled the growth that Lenovo and HP delivered.

IDC's PC Shipment Chart for Q3 2020 below shows us that Apple shipped 1,931 more Macs than in Q3 2019. They shipped 4,959 in Q3 2019 versus 6,890 in Q3 2020 which accounted for 38.9% growth year-over-year.  

Instead of highlighting the individual companies like Apple, IDC chose to list the countries where the highest strength in PC shipments were.

Canada: The Traditional PC market remained extremely active, posting the 17th consecutive quarter of gains. This is the second quarter where COVID-19-related restrictions were in effect, continuing to boost demand from Canadian households and from organizations looking to ensure business continuity through stay-at-home situations. The need for computing devices in Canada should remain high throughout the winter but spending might be impacted by the macro-economic situation, increasing pressure on average selling prices for the foreseeable future.

USA: The traditional PC market witnessed yet another extraordinary quarter posting strong double-digit shipment growth. Preliminary results reflect continued strong buyer sentiment fueled by stay-at-home PC needs and resultant inventory replenishment. While notebook shipments strengthened further due to sustained demand from the consumer and education segments, the desktop market declined year over year but found some respite as gaming systems remained in demand.

The report further noted that the Industry experienced shortages of multiple components, such as processors, panels, and other subcomponents, led to missed opportunity for many vendors. IDC stated that the shortages had been due more to a shortfall of business planning than a technical glitch. They expect the backlog will likely carry into 2021."  For more on this read the full IDC report.

Gartner also released their PC shipments report today but they count Microsoft Surface devices but not iPads, especially the iPad Pro according to their fine print. We can't support that kind of report that determines that A PC is restricted to Windows and macOS. Apple's iPad, though run on iOS,  performs PC functionality and until Gartner acknowledges that, we will not publish their statistics which we believe are biased.