“Canalys combines traditional PC and Tablet shipments to determine which vendors are tops in the Personal Computing market,” Chuck Jones explains for Forbes. “Due to the impact tablets have on desktop and notebook PCs I believe this is an appropriate way to analyze the computing market. While smartphones also have a large amount of compute power, due to their screen size and lower impact on the traditional PC market they are best left to their own segment.”
“Apple is the number one vendor when tablets are included vs. in a traditional PC analysis it does not show up in Gartner’s or IDC’s top 5 vendors,” Jones reports. “Lenovo shipped approximately 12.65 million PCs and about 1.5 million tablets putting it in second place.”
Jones reports, “HP shipped about 300,000 tablets and has a tenuous hold on third place as Samsung is coming on strong.”
Read more in the full article here.
Thanks to hardware as well as software.
While I don’t doubt that Apple is #1 overall, I have to be suspicious of any chart that shows the “other” group with more share than the top 2 combined. Where are these numbers coming from? It looks more like the automobile market than computers.
Leave it to Gartner, IDC, Forrester and a few other analyst firms to make it appear that Apple is less than it is in terms of PC shipments. Gartner, in its crusty, ,dismissive and patronizing New England manner, simply dismisses Apple as a toy manufacturer. I have often wondered if this is because Apple does not need to pour gallons of dollars into their coffers, while Dell, Microsoft et al have contributed many millions in subscriptions and studies to Gartner, IDC and similar firms. To see that Garner has not gotten the memo that a tablet is very much a full-blown computer either speaks of how far behind the curve they are, or they do so to prop up an inevitable trend change – the decline and fall of the WinTel hegemony.
Corporate accounts spend many millions each year to pony up for a Gartner, IDC, Forrester, iSupply and other IT analyst firm subscription. Their analysts are feted as gods, possessed with purported knowledge far beyond those of mortal men. These firms are supposed to predict the future, of what will be, and advise corporations on what should be done.
They are abject failures.
Gartner et al completely failed to see the fundamental changes affecting business and personal computing. They continued to consider RIM as being a leader, when back in 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and several years later, the iPad. Anyone with a brain should have realized on the spot that with those two announcements, computing as we know it changed completely. That Gartner and their cohorts failed at this is shameful.
Why these firms are considered relevant is beyond me. Why the press fawns over them and seek their counsel, not to mention quotes, terrifies me. You should be equally appalled.
I am already appalled. Apple is being dissed terribly by the tech industry and news media. Apple has had a horrible nine months and is constantly being declared as a dead company but yet it still has the highest market cap and the most reserve cash. Apple is still opening and expanding retail stores and no one is getting fired. Does Apple really seem like a company ready to go belly up? Apple is said to be doing EVERYTHING wrong with its business and yet it’s still hanging tough. Go figure that.
If Apple is doing everything wrong and the business is still thriving then think of what will happen once Apple starts getting at least half the things right.
Brian,
Its simple. They are old school and its old school to whom they are selling their services. When old school refuses to change, they die.
As Steve Jobs said, “Death is natures way to allow change” (close LOL) . And when these guys die, it will be big.
Microsoft and its ilk dominate the personal computing market in which Apple obtains a share of 20%. But that is because the majority of PC purchases are made centrally by corporate IT departments that impose artificial multi-vendor requirements (separate hardware and OS supplier) which Apple is clearly not qualified to compete unless you create a Boot Camp partition in the Mac in order to install Windows.
Speaking from personal experience though, in cases where the consumer has the choice and is in a position to make an informed decision either through corporate inspired BYOC (bring your own computer) programs or enlightened companies that realise that providing staff with a Mac equals increased productivity, then you will find that overwhelmingly the choice will fall on a Mac.
I have used PCs from an array of manufacturers, from Acer to HP to Dell to Sony and can generally say that it is a dismal experience. The hardware is often shoddily made (cheapest component supplier) necessitating much downtime for repairs or that the cruft of using Windows is a drain on productivity.
Since switching to a Mac, I can say that all of the hardware problems have gone away and in cases where they manifest, e.g., higher than normal battery drain on my MacBook Pro, Apple has been very quick to offer a free replacement which has eliminated the problem entirely. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that using a Mac is much more enjoyable than using a Windows machine and I think as Apple develops OS X into a viable corporate alternative to Windows, using Macs can only catch on and increase Apple’s share of the computing market.
It’s nice to hear, but does it really matter what Apple “rules.” The only thing Apple has to do is keep increasing revenue and profits. The news media will fudge the numbers to whatever they want it to appear as but earnings won’t lie and that’s what I’m counting on from Apple. Good earnings will not boost Apple’s share price like “middling” earnings boost Netflix or Tesla’s share price but Apple will be making serious money whether the hedge funds like it or not.
I think Apple can do so much more if it really set its mind to it but maybe they’re waiting until the new headquarters get built to go into overdrive. Right now, Apple appears to be just coasting relative to its wealth. It doesn’t appear to be stretching its legs at all. I’m just so eager to see Apple in a showdown with Google to see which company has the most clout as an overall company although Wall Street values Google so much more.
LB48,
“It’s nice to hear, but does it really matter what Apple “rules.” ”
You need to take a longer view on things. Look at how Dell is being considered a “walking dead” company. Not out loud yet, but no one really thinks they will matter in a few years. NO R+D, just a company that contracts its standard product from another china company.
To make Apple look bad, anal….yst have fallen to using “Other” as a major manufacturer. While it looks good on the chart, you can not even buy from other since NO ONE knows who they are…. just other, mom and pop shops making cheap copies. You cannot even test their machines really cause which machine out of the 1000 companies that make up “Other” do you use.
That is how far the anal…yst have fallen. Very soon, other bloggers will start feeding on their bloated blog sites.
Just a thought.
It is rather amusing that Canalys only recently started reporting the PC numbers in this fashion. When Apple was the only company shipping a significant number of tablets, it somehow did not make any sense to treat the iPad as a computer. Now that others are shipping tablets (many of them low-end and not functional substitutes for basic PC functions), analysts begin to see the light…
Yet another example of why your judgment is likely better and more up-to-date than the vast majority of the analysts who spew their opinions for free. It may just be the most expensive guidance you ever receive, should you choose to follow analyst guidance.
It has started. Once a blogger starts using tablets as part of the number of computers, Apple jumps from “other” to the number one maker of computers in the world….. And once one does it, others will start.
Suddenly, Apple is bigger than the rest of the mfg’s in the world. ANd its biggest competition is “OTHER”, as in 1000+ small makers that no one knows their name. “How does Apple compare with “Other”?,,, no way to say as “Other” cannot be found, which of the 1000+ sample computers made by “Other” do you use.
Seriously, I think this is the crack in the dam. Once it starts, there is no stopping it.
“Mr. Toads Wild Ride” is boarding now…..
since when do free markets have rulers?
Haaaaaa… All the time. Either in 12 inch or 1 meter sizes. Wood or plastic. Rulers for all.
Sorry its been a long monday. LOL
Ohh ye ye. HP launched a tablet not long ago. Meg was calling it innovation. A little bit late to the game but I guess they do what they need to do. They will also be launching a smartphone, again. This is the third time in a few years HP is thinking/joning the phone race. They had something going a few years before the Palm aqcusition. If they had kept going they would probably still be in the race. They had the chance with Palm but really ditched it there… That is just so tragic. Had they really pushed Palm they would probably be the third largest vendor now. I have no F-ing idea what the heck they were thinking… They had the grand change of catching up in the start of the smartphone race and just scrapped Palm… Some should really be fired for that. They essentially ditched the company’s future and now they are struggling.
And shipping 300000 tablets isn’t that much and it’s low price low margin. And shipped does not mean sold. For everyone else except Apple it means stuffing the channel. I’m sure HP doesn’t break out exactly how many they really sold.