Photo: Yagan Kiely / Flickr

Netbooks, notebooks, desktops and other types of PC should pen a letter together, that reads: ‘Dear tablets, thank you for joining the family, and growing our footprint, not only in terms of variety, but industry-wide sales. We couldn’t have done it without you. XoXoXo, The Others’. Because if a recent Canalys report that tablets were a massive contributor to Q4 growth in the PC industry last quarter is true, then tablets need to start getting the respect they deserve.

Wait, iPads need to be thanked, actually

If you want to be snarky, like some pundits have been, then you can simply replace the word ‘tablets’ with the word ‘iPad’, since that is really what has been the roaring success in the computer industry.

Canalys methodology

What makes the Canalys report unique when compared to the likes of the IDC reports and Gartner Research computing reports is that Canalys sees tablets as part of the PC product stack, and adds those unit sales to the overall total of PC sales. As such, according to this report, HP was the number one computer manufacturer, Acer followed in second, and Apple leapt into third place off strong iPad sales, pushing Dell and Lenovo to fourth and fifth respectively.

Furthermore, this means that the overall computer industry saw growth of 19 per cent in Q4 2010, which is massive for such an established industry. By comparison, Gartner Research and IDC reports only tracked 3 per cent growth, since they exclude tablet PCs from their totals.

Get with the party

Canalys is quick to explain that they are onto something here and everybody else should get with the party. The firm’s Daryl Chiam says: ‘Any argument that a pad is not a PC is simply out of sync.’ He continues, saying that ‘With screen sizes of seven inches or above, ample processing power and a growing number of applications, pads offer a computing experience comparable to netbooks. They compete for the same customers.’

We agree. Tablet PCs should be counted in the overall total. Gartner Research and the folks who do the IDC reports should get with the programme.

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano / Flickr

If you have a pulse for the technology and computing industry, you likely know that tablet PCs are going to be a huge deal. In recent weeks, we’ve reviewed several tablets all the while watching Apple’s tablet, the iPad, skyrocketing to unprecedented numbers. Now, as analysts cast their eyes to the future, and investors begins to do serious inspection on what tablet computers may mean for the entire PC space, it has emerged that the Apple tablet could propel the company’s PC market share significantly.

Twelve per cent market share

Goldman Sachs’ Bill Shope has expressed he believes that 54.7 million tablet PCs will be sold in 2011, with 37.2 million of those being iPads. Shope says this unprecedented explosion in sales will see Apple become ‘one of the largest vendors in the global personal computing market.’

Shope says, via All Things D, ‘Apple’s share of the PC market has been below 5 percent for most of the past 15 years’ with the so-called ‘iPod halo effect’ doing little to change this. Shope, however thinks this time, with the Apple tablet PC, things will be different.

He says: ‘With the iPad, however, Apple is now offering a unique computing device that is priced for the mass market,’ which the Goldman team believes will generate more revenue than the Cupertino company’s core Mac business. He goes on to say that ‘If we include tablets in our PC unit forecast, then our estimates suggest Apple’s combined iPad and Mac market share would reach 12 percent in 2011.’

The new game

The Apple tablet PC, as well as the many other tablets on the market prove a very important point: computing usage patterns and habits are changing fundamentally, threatening the core business of the past desktop era leaders, with Intel and Microsoft being most at risk.

Photo: iSuppli

iSuppli, the computer industry research firm, has reported that worldwide shipments of PCs have experienced record-breaking growth in Q1 2010, with Acer, in particular, enjoying a surge in PC market share.

Thanks, Asia

The worldwide PC market grew an astonishing 22.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010 off of the back of strong growth in the Asian market. This almost implausible figure represents the highest growth in a single quarter iSuppli Corp has ever recorded since it began tracking PC shipments. While Q1 2009 saw shipment of 66.5 million units, Q1 2010 saw shipments of 81.5 million units, for a year-on-year increase of 13.6 million PCs.

A weak 2009 helped exaggerate the growth

Matthew Wilkins, an analyst at iSuppli explained to PC World that 2009’s poor performance added to the luster of 2010’s strong performance. He said: ‘this record growth resulted from strong sales in the first quarter of 2010 combined with weak conditions during the first three months of 2009.’

The recession – and recessionary fears – resulted in a reduction in spending on both the enterprise front and for home users, but with the recession seemingly behind us, buyers have flocked back to stocking up on PCs.

The big winner? Acer

Photo: Acer

Acer, who are now the second biggest computer manufacturer by volume behind only HP, were the big winners. The company’s year-on-year Q1 growth amounted to a whopping 47.1 per cent, driven by its focus on the notebook market, according to iSuppli. This resulted in Acer’s global PC market share growing from 11.1 to 13.3 per cent in 2010. HP now sits only 6.3 percentage points ahead of Acer in terms of global PC market share. But that is not to say HP’s PC market share has slid. It’s remained stable at 19.6 per cent, meaning Acer is taking this share from everybody else.

Given the emergence of the tablet market, it will be interesting to see if it accounts for a significant percentage of the personal computing industry come the middle of 2011.