iPad sales shove Apple to top of mobile computing tree
Jobs mob looks down on HP, Dell et al
You can see why Apple thinks the iPad is "magical" - the fondleslab has again mysteriously lifted the company's share of the mobile computer market above even HP and Dell.
Add iPad shipments to those of MacBooks Air, Pro and standard, and Apple shipped 13.6m mobile computers in Q2 2011, market watcher DisplaySearch says.
That gives Apple 21.1 per cent of said market, rather more than HP's 15 per cent - on shipments of 9.7m units - and Dell's 11.6 per cent (7.5m).
Acer comes in fourth place, according to DS, with a 10.9 per cent share (7m units), ahead of Lenovo (7.5 per cent, 4.8m units).
Of course, 80-odd per cent of Apple's shipments were tablets - 10.7m units - leaving its notebook shipments at just 2.9m units, putting it well behind the others if you equate 'mobile computing' solely with laptops.
Given how well HP's own tablet isn't shipping, the giant would undoubtedly endorse that view. Though it'll surely agree to add in tablet sales if it manages to persuade punters to pick up its TouchPad after all.
It may have to. “Preliminary results show a second consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment growth rate decline,” said DS' Richard Shim.
“While part of the year-on-year decline can be attributed to a strong H1 2010, the rising tablet PC shipment growth rate begins to point to notebook PC shipment cannibalisation.”
Some 5.6m non-Apple tablets shipped in the quarter, DS said. ®
COMMENTS
Bad analogy
More like buying a motorbike instead of a car. It has fewer use cases, but what it does, it does better. For example, I wouldn't want to take the family on holiday on a motorbike, but I'd far rather use it to get across London.
Re: This used to be a tech forum for techies ...
Odd, I thought it had been hijacked by a gaggle of passive-aggressive Apple anti-fans.
Meanwhile, you just declared
that you're a barely literate, opinionated idiot.
Re: You are in the wrong place ...
FWIW, I have a first-gen iPad and it travels with me pretty much everywhere. No physical keyboard, sure, but the battery life micturates on every netbook I have ever used, plus it's lighter, easier to carry and has a tiny, tiny AC adaptor.
It is perfect for entertainment on long flights, holidays, etc - or even just sitting on the train or in the living room. It has email and a good browser.
As such, it meets my personal mobile tech needs better than anything else. Personally, I do not need a zillion HDMI ports, but I would like USB for on-the-hoof data transfer.
Digital comics look pants on a laptop/netbook screen. Nothing beats auto-rotation when you're reading a book with a mix of portrait and landscape pages.
Other tablets have these, but I'm not pissed off with the few flaws sufficiently to try an sell this in order to buy an Eee Pad, say. Maybe next time, but that won't be for a while.
Point is, the only reasons not to buy an iPad are because you can't afford it/you think it overpriced, you desperately need an SD/HDMI/USB port and don't like using an adaptor, or because you have a philosophical issue with the walled garden.
I don't - I have to buy content from someone, so it may as well be Apple. And I do have choices: e-books from Amazon rather than iTunes; DVDs and CDs likewise. I have apps to play non-Apple media formats.
Like most of the folk here, I suspect, I have multiple machines for different jobs: big laptop for number crunching, little laptop for work away, tablet for everything else. Oh, and a desktop at work.
