Discussion of Mac sales may have been a bit of a yawner during Apple's earnings call last month, but sales have reportedly picked up significantly since then. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster obtained NPD's retail data for January 2013 (hat tip to MacRumors) and said Mac sales were up 31 percent year over year—an increase he calls a "significant improvement." The reason for the increase? Apple actually caught up (a bit) on its iMac supply during the month of January.
Apple announced its new, thinner iMac during a media event in late October, but didn't make the first new iMacs available until the end of November. That was just the 21.5" model, too—the 27" model didn't begin shipping until close to the end of December. At the time, it was mostly those who placed preorders who were receiving their machines; it was near impossible for regular Apple Store shoppers to find one for weeks after they began shipping.
Apple's executives cited these constraints repeatedly during the company's first quarter 2013 earnings announcement (Apple's first fiscal quarter encompasses the holiday season and ends in January). Overall Mac sales were down by 1.2 million from the same quarter in 2012—partially due to a 13-week quarter instead of the previous year's 14-week quarter—but the iMac alone was down by 700,000 units year over year. "As we projected a year ago, we were significantly constrained with iMacs," said CFO Peter Oppenheimer during January's earnings call. "We believe our Mac sales would have been higher absent those constraints."
As All Things D notes in it headline, it turns out having more iMacs to sell does help iMac sales. But that doesn't mean Apple has completely caught up with demand just yet; CEO Tim Cook warned that while Apple would "significantly increase supply" of the iMac this quarter, there would still likely be more demand than supply until later in the year.
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