“Where do you guys come up with these factoids? “
Quoted from the posted article. These are the US sales numbers.
No they are not "sales numbers". . . those were Gartner's and IDC's pre-announcement guesstimates—published on April 9, 2014—which do not include any data from Apple's online store which claimed doom and gloom for Apple, while making rosy claims for the PC industry which pays their freight. These "guesstimates" have never been accurate and are based on observations of what their employees claim to see being sold at brick-and-mortar stores. Apple sells approximately 55% of all Macs in the USA.
Your post implied the data you were providing was the TOTAL number of Macs sold. . . not just one sector. . . and that that data was preliminary.. Nor did you provide your source.
Another error in Gartner's and IDC claims is that they both claim the Mac accounts for 10% of Apple's bottom line; actual figures from Apple show 12%.
Gartner projected an increase of 2.1% Mac sales resulting in a DROP a negative 1.7% YoY drop in market share growth, while IDC was more enthusiastic with a 0.6% decline in Mac sales and a 4.4% reduction in Mac market share growth in the US. They were BOTH way off the mark; Macs actually had about an 6% jump in US sales. . . and a jump in market share.
The ONLY Apple product seeing a YoY reduction in shipping was the iPad, which actually had a slight increase in sales but a drop in shipped numbers due to inventory adjustments.
Additionally, the article you cited reported the delta—the rate of market share change—as the Mac's market share. . . the first Calendar Quarter 2014 was 10.8% according to Gartner's error ridden guesstimate (even their market share figures were based on total PC sales with a plus or minus 3 million higher or lower guess using the maximum to get their percentages!), when it actually was a little over 12% using the accurate numbers.
Gartner and IDC pull their guesses out of thin air. The actual figures are published by Apple only days later in their Financial filings and report to Stockholders, on April 23, 2014. Apple makes THEIR numbers public.