Apple tops tablet, mobile computer markets in Q1
Lagging in laptops, mind
The usual caveat applies: these numbers only work if you factor in tablet sales. Do, says market watcher DisplaySearch, and Apple is once more the world's top-selling maker of mobile computers.
The Cupertino company took 22.5 per cent of the market in Q1, almost double the market share of its nearest rival, HP, which notched up 11.6 per cent.
Those figures are based on unit shipments of 17.2m and 8.9m, respectively.
Acer came in third (nine per cent, 6.9m units) followed by Lenovo (7.7 per cent, 5.9m) and Dell (7.3 per cent, 5.6m).
Of course, ignore tablets, and Apple immediately vanishes from the chart. The other four shift up a rung, and Asus moves up into fifth place, thanks to shipments of 4.4m units.
Apple shipped around 3.6m notebooks during the quarter, DisplaySearch's numbers show.
Apple's own figures for Q1 - the company's second fiscal quarter - put total iPad shipments at 11.8m units, with 4m Mac sales, some of them desktops. Even assuming Apple sold no desktops at all - all those 4m Macs were MacBooks - that still puts Apple's total less than the figure DisplaySearch gives. DisplaySearch reckons 13.6m iPads shipped.
We've asked DisplaySearch how it accounts for the discrepancy. To be fair, the company does point out that its numbers are "preliminary", so subject to change before the final figures are posted.
Meanwhile, focusing on tablets, the market watcher lines up Apple's rivals as follows, again based on unit shipments: Samsung (7.5 per cent, 1.9m units), Amazon (four per cent, 0.9m), RIM (2.3 per cent, 0.5m) and Asus (2.3 per cent, 0.5m). ®
COMMENTS
It could be interesting.
With the latest tick or tock (I can never remember which way round Intel's jargon is) being released in products in Q4 and the release of the Haswell chips middle of next year sometime, AMD pursuing their own strategy, (and ARM will no doubt have their own plans) plus the prices coming down on panels with higher resolutions there does seem to be some basis for hope that something more interesting will start to become available whether one wants a table, a notebook or an Ultrabook/MBA etc. Furthermore, regardless of one's individual opinion of Win 8 the OEMs will certainly be wanting to use the opportunity to get us to open our wallets. I am not sanguine but there is at least some hope that there might be something worth buying out there in the course of the next 12 months.
Would be interesting
to break down these figures, for each supplier, into laptops/desktops sold to business customers and those sold to private users (free choice for the user).
Business buyers tend to be buying in bulk, or at least more than one, to support standard business tools that, today, are mainly Microsoft software or supported on Microsoft software. I should not be surprised if the majoirty of Windows PCs are owned by businesses. The building I am in must have upwards of eight thousand (at least 5000 workers and growing, most with one, some with two machines as well as dedicated purpose machines, spares, new, retired ....). Look at those vast Lego blocks in London's Docklands, stuffed with workers, each with at least one computer on his desk.
So, a breakdwon of the main two customer types would be more revealing and perhaps indicate future direction.
Apple have not been insignificant in notebooks for a long while but its still a fairly static niche. Looking forward to see if the new MacBook design hits the spot, theres been a distinct lack of innovation from the current notebook top 5 in recent years we need some shakeup. Will also be interesting later in the year to see whether HP et al use the Windows 8 opportunity to bring anything new to the party or continue with the same yawnfest of products.
