iPad Could Make Apple Tops in Computer Sales Globally
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011Tablet computers have shaken up the PC industry so much that Apple may overtake Hewlett-Packard as the world’s biggest computer distributor by the second half of next year.
That’s the claim of market analysis firm Canalys, which says Apple’s industry-building iPad has already made the Cupertino, Calif.,-based giant No. 2 in the world during the third quarter of this year.
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Soaring sales of last year’s iPad and this year’s iPad 2 will help drive total 2011 global PC shipments to 415 million, up 15 percent year-on-year, Canalys says, while tablet shipments will reach a whopping 55 million units by year’s end. Heavy volume during the holiday season may drive fourth-quarter figures to 22 million, with the iPad dominating the market. Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet will also be competitive, the firm said.
But is lumping tablets together with laptops and desktops as personal computers, well, mixing apples and oranges?
No, says Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group.
“Actually tablets historically were PCs, and as we move into next year the new ones, which started out more like big smartphones without the phone part, will be getting four- and five-core processors and begin to run Windows,” Enderle said.
Finnish handset giant Nokia has recently signaled that its debut next year in the tablet market will be a Windows 8 device.
Noting that they are competitively priced, Enderle has been suggesting for some time that tablets should be included in PC market share numbers as consumers increasingly choose between the two.
“I’ve seen a number of reports that actually don’t put Apple on the chart in order to make the PC vendors look better and I think that is a huge mistake, because it creates a false sense of confidence,” Enderle said.
“The risk for Apple is much of their…
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