Apple Largest PC Manufacturer In The World:
Having recently been picked up for using the term PC to not mean tablets in reference to tablets replacing the humble desktop, news in from Toms Hardware indicates that a research firm going by the name of Canalys, has used the shipment of tablet PC’s (pads) in the same data collated as your old school desktop PC and variants such as laptops, using this controversial technique of data collection leads to Apple being the worlds largest PC company according to their statistics.
Now obviously this terminology is a grey area, with tablet PC’s already being a term in many peoples vocabulary, but perhaps not quite getting into the parlance of the statisticians, it is however fair to say that this figure marries up to Apple’s current valuation which rivals Exxon with one beating the other in terms of capital value every quarter currently.
The statistics:
Q4 of 2011 saw 120 million “client” PC’s shipped, these include:
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- Desktops
- Tablets
- Netboks
- Notebooks
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This represents a 16% annual growth, but if you take tablets out of this equation you can see that the “traditional” PC shipments actually contracted by 0.4% showing just how disruptive the likes of Apples iPad and the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble Nook have become for companies such as HP.
On this note, both Acer, Dell and HP lost market share while Apple saw significant gains, with 5 millions Mac’s and 15 million iPads shipped in Q4 contributing to a 6% year on year extra market share, now up to 17% for Apple.
Canalys analyst Tim Coulling has stated that HP will see difficult times ahead as they focus on a business model that may not work for the company:
“Currently, HP is pursuing a Windows strategy for its pad portfolio, producing enterprise-focused products, such as the recently launched Slate 2, until the launch of Windows 8, however, questions remain over Microsoft’s entry into the consumer pad space. While early demonstrations of the Window 8 operating system seem promising, Microsoft must focus its efforts on creating an intuitive user experience that is far less resource intensive.”
Lenovo are seemingly also doing well with gains of 2 market points largely based on their decision to join the consumer and enterprise tablet market using Android as their O/S.
With tablets equating to a 22% share of the overall PC shipments in Q4 of 2011 it can be seen that if you are not doing well in this niche you may well see your core sales drop and see difficulty with bottom lines in the short/medium term.
Canalys’ Tim Coulling noted:
“The consumerization of IT continues to be a significant disruptive force in the PC industry, but many of the leading vendors have failed to capitalize on the trend to date, this year will be a pivotal year for those vendors that were slow to launch pads. It is not just the product that they need to get right, business models are equally important – driving revenues from content delivery can help vendors reach lower price points in a market that is incredibly price sensitive.”
Now maybe a good time to show an old video produced showing this trend in video form…enjoy:
Anthony Munns