Apple in 2012 – World’s Number 1 PC Vendor?
As per research firm Canalys, Apple is all set to dethrone Hewlett-Packard from the position of world’s top PC vendor. This is not surprising considering the indecisiveness from Hewlett-Packard regarding their Personal Systems Group (PSG), lack of direction and their TouchPad fiasco. As per Canalys, Apple might overtake HP before the second half of 2012. Apple’s iPad had revolutionized the PC industry and changed the rules of the game. Taking these changes into account, Canalys justly classifies iPad under personal computer. Thanks to iPad’s courtesy, Apple already zoomed into second place in the PC market in Q3 of 2011. And the stage is all set for iPad 3 to help Apple surpass HP’s market share.
In our previous post we mentioned about the Gartner survey, according to which Apple will totally dominate the tablet market consistently for the next 3 years. Digitimes is talking about some PC vendors completely leaving the tablet space. Owing to lack of proper ecosystem and linkages with content these PC vendors are unable to compete against the Apple’s and Amazon’s of the new PC era. Android’s release of Ice Cream Sandwich might be a hope for tier 1 manufacturers, but the release’s timing and upgrade timescales will not be of much help as per Canalys. Savvy consumers might put off their purchases until the release of newest Android version.
As per estimates from Canalys, full-year 2011 worldwide PC shipments will reach 415 million. This is an increase of 15% year-on-year. No prizes for guessing that a large part of this is due to ipad sales. Apple’s share of PC market rose from 9% to 15% within just four quarters.Total pad shipments are expected to reach 59 million units by the end of 2011, with Q4 volumes predicted to exceed 22 million. We need to see the impact of devices like Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet on iPad’s dominance. Do you think HP must revive their TouchPad or come up with a new tablet to get a foothold in tablet space to counter Apple? But Content is the King and the ultimate differentiator!
