When people think about Apple products, their minds tend to go straight toward the mobile division and the iPhone, iPod and iPad. However, the company was built on the back of the iMac and after a down quarter to end 2012, the computer is back with amazing sales numbers.
The company introduced a new version of the iMac in the second half of 2012 but sales numbers were not what they expected. The numbers were down 17 percent – 4.1 million units sold in 2012 down from 4.9 million the year before. Apple contributes this stumble to the production issues that have plagued the production of the desktop, mainly from the screen lamination process.
Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about the iMac supply issue and what the future of the computer would be during the last reported earnings call. According to Cook, the company left the quarter with significant constraints on the iMac. He added that sales numbers would be much higher without those issues and he promised that Apple would work hard to ramp up production.
"On iMac, we are confident that we are going to significantly increase the supply," Cook said. "But the demand here is very strong, and we are not certain that we will achieve a supply-demand balance during the quarter."
Now, according to data from the NPD, those issues may be over as Mac sales rose 31 percent year-over-year for the month of January. This is because Apple is finally able to ramp up the supply to meet the demand.
The iMac is one of the pillars of Apple, especially the business sales sphere that the company has been pushing in recent years. Any company can take advantage of this by partnering with an IT consulting firm that is familiar with Mac integration.
