“The iPad is wreaking havoc on the personal-computer market,” Aaron Ricadela and Dina Bass report for Bloomberg.
“Hewlett-Packard Co. consumer PC sales plunged 23 percent last quarter, and the company lopped $1 billion off its annual sales forecast,” Ricadela and Bass report. “And while rival Dell Inc. beat analysts’ estimates because of corporate demand, its sales to consumers slumped 7.5 percent.”
Ricadela and Bass report, “More than 70 million tablets like the Apple Inc. iPad will be sold in 2011, a total that will balloon to 246 million in three years, Jefferies & Co. said yesterday. ‘You’re walking into a buzz saw,’ Jane Snorek, a senior research analyst at Nuveen Asset Management in Milwaukee, said of the iPad. Her firm manages more than $200 billion in assets. ‘The tablet is going to replace at least the home computer.'”
Apple’s revolutionary “iPad has siphoned off more PC sales than analysts and executives predicted,” Ricadela and Bass report. “The PC market, by contrast, declined last quarter. Global shipments fell 3.2 percent, hurt in part because some consumers bought tablets instead, [versus Apple Mac sales which were up 9.6%] research firm IDC reported last month… The success of the iPad, along with the iPhone and new versions of the Mac, helped Apple supplant Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company last year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s see, Windows PC sales are down. Apple Mac are sales up. Mac sales have outgrow Windows PC sales for 20 straight quarters and counting. In the consumer market, where people have a choice, they choose Apple Macs and/or iPads. The last bastion of the Windows PC is the always-behind-the-curve corporate market where people generally don’t have a choice. Eventually Apple will take that market, too. Mr. IT Doofus, your rude awakening is finally, blessedly nigh!