“A couple of weeks ago, market research firm Canalys made a significant prediction that by the end of 2012, Apple would be the number 1 PC vendor in the world,” Ben Bajrin reports for Tech.pinions. “To get to this number, they recognized the iPad as a personal computer and pointed out that if you include iPad’s, Apple would be the #1 PC vendor as well as #1 mobile computer vendor in the market by the end of next year.”
“For the last 10 years, Apple has been all of the OEM’s worst nightmare. They became #1 in portable music players, and then became the #1 handset maker. And with the iPad they emerged as the #1 tablet maker. Now these OEM’s have to put up with the reality that Apple is on track to become the #1 PC vendor as well,” Bajrin reports. “And there is something else that Apple does that really irks them too. The fact that while they are having to live with margins of about 5-8% on almost all of their products sold, Apple is making margins well above 25% on everything they sell.”
Bajrin writes, “All of the PC vendors will most likely lose ground to Apple next year, and knowing Apple, once they get to the top of the PC market share mountain, they just may have enough new products in their upcoming arsenal to keep them there for some time. If this happens, the big PC companies may have to get used to playing second banana to Apple in this new role of #1 PC vendor, something that they would never have dreamed would happen.”
Read more in the full article here.