It’s not just your imagination; you are seeing more Macs being used in business environments these days — and that trend is expected to continue.
The latest Omdia/Informa US PC market data found that Apple took an 11% share of the US enterprise market last year. “For full-year 2025…, the biggest story at the vendor level was Apple, which has been making market share gains in US businesses, reaching an 11% share in full year 2025: up 2.4 percentage points from 2024,” said Kieren Jessop, research manager at Omdia:
Selected data points include :
- Across all segments (education, consumer, business) Macs grabbed 15.7% share in the last quarter of 2025.
- The Mac achieved an overall 16% market share across the year.
- Mac growth hit 11.2% in 2025 compared to industry average growth of 3.3%.
The data shouldn’t mask that enterprises are still dominated by Windows devices, but does give us a fairly useful temperature showing where the industry heat is right now.
What drove growth?
The MacBook Air maintained its place on the throne as “Most Popular Notebook,” Jessop said. Apple, now in its 50th year, also boosted memory to 16GB while pruning $100 off the cost of the ‘Air during the year. Those moves helped keep sales healthy.
There may be more to come, Jessop suggested, particularly as the MacBook Neo enters public consciousness: “The $599 Neo extends that value trajectory and is expected to significantly disrupt the entry-level segment,” he said.
The Neo (reviewed here) is most certainly an inflection point for intense competition, the analyst noted. Available at just $499 in the weak education market, and $599 everywhere else, the new Mac aims squarely at entry-level users. The thing is, it breaks into this part of the market at the same time as widely-reported component cost increases kick in.
“Looking ahead, the outlook for 2026 is significantly more cautious,” said Jessop, predicting huge price increases in RAM and storage components. “Memory and storage costs have risen 40%–70% since the start of 2025,” he said.
PC sales will feel the geopolitical heat
Climbing component prices are unlikely to change trajectory anytime soon, with the problem made worse by the growing conflagration in the Middle East. Oil is used in everything, from ferrying finished products around to creating the casing around cabling and manufacturing equipment of all kinds. Shortage in this one raw material will inevitably pour problems across the industry.
“Omdia expects at least a further 60% increase in mainstream PC memory and storage costs in Q1 2026,” the analyst said, predicting the greatest impacts on the sub-$500 segment, which includes most education and entry-level consumer devices. To put that into context, Omdia is currently forecasting a $90 to $165 increase in PC build costs due to component shortages. These steep increases are expected to affect everyone, and while some of the larger manufacturers might be able to swallow a hit against margins, others will be unable to do the same.
Apple is knocking on the door
We learned last week that Apple is moving quite aggressively, allegedly purchasing memory at top dollar prices and choosing to handle the pain. This secures its own supply, of course, but also makes it harder for others to buy the memory they need at a price they can afford.
The competitive threat it is putting in place is quite real. “As thinner margins and lower allocation priority constrain the low-end market, smaller vendors are especially at risk of being squeezed out of the market,” Jessop said.
Looking ahead, what seems most likely is that Windows systems comparable to the MacBook Air will begin to see increase prices, a move that will make the lower-cost Mac even more competitive. That’s particularly true across enterprises that need to deploy new kit, but face their own existential cost and supply chain-related challenges.
We have to wait and see how these forces play out, but it seems plausible to think Apple is nowhere near hitting the ceiling of its enterprise market share gains. The combination of its own strategies (from its various platforms, OSes, and Apple Silicon) and market reality seems to be forming a structural advantage the company should be able to exploit for years.
“Apple’s vertical integration (own silicon, own OS) gives it more levers than competitors reliant on third-party chips and Microsoft licensing,” Hexnode CEO Apu Pavithran told me recently.
It’s almost as if years of carving out its own independent place means Apple now has in place strengths its competitors do not possess.
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