Apple Sits Atop Mobile PC Shipments (If You Include Tablets)
Those figures include tablet PCs, an area Apple dominates with its iPad devices. Apple's share of the mobile PC market sits at 26.6 percent when including tablets, well ahead of Hewlett-Packard, which sits in second place with 8.7 million units shipped in Q4 for a 9.9 percent share of the market. Rounding out the top five are Dell (6.9 million units shipped in Q4, 7.9 percent share), Acer (6.8 million units, 7.7 percent share), and Lenovo (6.3 million units, 7.2 percent share).
"Mobile PC brands read the writing on the wall in the fourth quarter," said Richard Shim, NPD DisplaySearch Senior Analyst. "Consumer demand for notebooks was expected to be weak following modest back-to-school results, especially with the expected launch of Windows 8 on the horizon, and increasing interest in tablet PCs. As a result, brands focused their typical holiday price cuts on tablets to boost demand."
If you take tablet PCs out of the equation, Apple falls to last place among the Top 5, which breaks down like this:
- HP: 8.7 million units shipped, 15.5 percent share
- Dell: 6.7 million units shipped, 11.8 percent share
- Acer: 6.6 million units shipped, 11.8 percent share
- Lenovo: 6.1 million units shipped, 10.8 percent share
- Apple: 4.6 million units shipped, 8.3 percent share
Do you think tablets should be included when looking at the mobile PC market? What about smartphones?