Apple saw the sales of Mac computers slow down to the lowest rate over the past two years, according to two industry research companies.
Gartner and International Data Corp. (IDC) were in disagreement over just how much sales slowed down for Apple, though.
According to the IDC, sales of Mac computers for the third quarter was lower by 3.4 percent compared to the corresponding quarter last year, with Apple selling about 5.6 million units.
Gartner, on the other hand, reported a sales growth of 1.5 percent for about 5.3 million units for the Mac computers.
The two research companies agreed on one thing: the growth rate of Apple's sales for Mac computers is the slowest for the third quarter of this year since the third quarter of 2013.
This is the first instance that the growth rate of Mac sales decreased for Apple since 2013, the IDC reports.
Despite the slower growth rate of Apple's sales for Mac computers, the company can still consider itself fortunate. This is because Apple was still able to outperform the overall market for PCs, as the industry saw sales plunge by 11 percent to 71 million for the third quarter, adds the IDC.
In addition, due to the even worse performance of the other PC-manufacturing companies, Apple's share of the PC market has increased to 7.6 percent, compared to 6.9 percent last year, according to data from Gartner.
Lenovo retained market leadership with a 20.3 percent market share, followed by HP at 18.5 percent and Dell at 13.8 percent, also according to data from Gartner. The IDC had slightly different percentages but had the same order of market leadership in its data.
One of the main reasons for the slower sales of Mac computers is the stronger U.S. dollar, which prompted the price increase of the computers in locations outside the United States, according to IDC analyst Jay Chou.
Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa, in addition, said that Apple suffered from weaker markets in Europe and Japan.
The official numbers for Apple's sales of Mac computers will be reported by the company later in the month on Oct. 27 once Apple posts its financial results for the third quarter of the calendar year.
