A bit of semantic juggling makes Apple the biggest player in both the personal computer and mobile platform markets.
A research report published today by DisplaySearch found that sales of the iPad propelled Apple past HP for the No. 1 spot in the "mobile PC" market.
To make that work, you have to count the iPad as a PC. DisplaySearch combined sales of Mac notebooks with the iPad and found that Apple sold 10.2 million, or 17.2 percent, of mobile computers shipped during the fourth quarter of 2010. HP shipped 9.3 million.
But you could also count the iPad as a mobile device, as some have done. If you lump together the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, Apple's iOS is the mobile operating system most often used to browse the web, according to NetMarketShare.
“While we anticipate increased competition in the tablet PC market later this year with the introduction of Android Honeycomb-based tablets, Apple’s iPad business is complementing a notebook line whose shipments widely exceed the industry average growth rate,” said Richard Shim, Senior Analyst at DisplaySearch. “Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs. Cannibalization seems limited at this point.”
The reports seem slanted in Apple's favor: traditionally the iPad wouldn't be considered a PC, and most research firms have concluded Android is beating the iPhone in the smartphone market, which doesn't count the iPod Touch or iPad.
But it's rational to count the iPad as a personal computer because, well, it's a computer, even if it has more limited capabilities than a PC. And it seems fair to combine iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone sales when determining which mobile platform has the most dominance: They're all running Apple's iOS.
When you look at the big picture, the labels don't matter to the manufacturers: They just want customers buying their products, and they don't care if you call it a PC, smartphone or tablet.
The two reports also demonstrate that the lines between "PC" and "mobile" are blurring. Technically all these products — the iPhone, MacBook, iPad, iPod Touch, HP notebooks, Android smartphones and so on — are mobile computers.
So if you look at the iPad as a personal computer, and the iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone as one mobile platform (which it is), one thing is clear: Apple may have lost the PC war, but it's winning in the post-PC era.
Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com
