The bad news is that Apple's iMac sales are slumping. Reportedly Fred Anderson, Cupertino's very own treasurer himself, has plainly admitted this to various Wall Street analysts, who have subsequently downgraded Apple's stock and/or reduced their estimates for Apple's quarterly earnings. (As usual, Apple's stock is skyrocketing on the bad news. Go figure.) The good news, though, is that sales of all other Apple systems are apparently hanging tough. MacNN got a hold of PC Data's latest report, and it seems that Apple's share of the retail pie climbed to 9.6% in April. That puts our hero in fourth place, just behind Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and eMachines. Not bad, right?

But now there's more bad news: while Apple continues to show year-over-year unit growth, PC Data claims that Apple's growth has slipped below average. The reason? Well, iBook, PowerBook, and G4 sales are still strong, so it's got to be those darned declining iMac sales. And PC Data's Steve Baker has his own theory about why the iMac's numbers are dropping like a stone: cheaper or similarly-priced PCs come with "better" gear. Apparently these days fewer and fewer PCs are shipping with a monitor smaller than 17", and of course the iMac still has a 15" integrated display. There's also the fact that many PCs now ship with CD-RW drives, whereas the iMac has either a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM instead. Now, say what you will about the iMac display's strikingly high quality, or the fact that the average shmoe doesn't need (or doesn't think he needs) a CD-RW drive; when all's said and done, buyers are generally not considering semi-intangibles like the elegance of the Mac OS, the blissful silence of a fanless design, or the capability to add wireless networking at a low cost. They're looking at two things: the listed specs and the bottom line. And in that contest, right now the iMac's not looking so hot.

So what's the solution? More advertising? Apple seems to think so, since we've been seeing plenty of iMac ads over the course of the past month (and after seeing the sales figures, we now know why), but we doubt that a barrage of Goldblum voiceovers during Must-See TV is really going to make a big difference at this point. The obvious answer is for Apple to ship a new iMac. The current model is eight months old, which is "Model-T-old" in an industry that refreshes products on average every four months. Unquestionably, the iMac is in dire need of a sprucing up. How about that mythical 17" iMac we've heard so much about? Okay, so it's not a very likely addition to Apple's line-up. We'll settle for a revamped Kihei with a faster G3, more disk space, and a lower price instead. But if Apple's really planning to hold out until Macworld Expo to refresh the iMac, we might be in for some seriously worrisome numbers to come...