Apple breezes to PC sales' top spot as Windows share decays

Computerworld - Apple sold more PCs worldwide last quarter -- 21 million -- than any rival, retaking the lead it lost the quarter before, U.K.-based Canalys said yesterday.

And because Microsoft lacks a tablet operating system, sales of Windows-powered PCs fell to an all-time low as a percentage of total sales.

Unlike other research firms, Canalys counts tablets 7-in. or larger as PCs, figuring that they're used for many of the same purposes as a notebook or even a desktop. Using that definition, Apple, which sold 17 million iPads and 4 million Macs during the period that ended June 30 -- shot to the top of the chart.

Apple regained the No. 1 position in the second quarter after ceding it in the first to Hewlett-Packard. The Cupertino, Calif. maker of Macs and iPads had last been the world's top-selling PC seller in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Canalys pegged Apple's 21 million units as 19% of the sales share, well above both HP and Lenovo, the No. 2 and 3 manufacturers, which each sold approximately 13 million PCs for a 12% share. Rounding out the top 5 were Acer and Dell, with unit sales of 10.6 and 9.6 million, respectively.

On the back of its iPad sales, Apple posted growth of almost 60% over the same quarter the year before, joining Lenovo and Acer as the vendors that showed gains. HP's and Dell's PC sales each fell about 11% year-over-year.

While most research firms continue to split tablets and traditional PC form factors -- desktops, laptops and the quickly-vanishing netbooks -- Canalys argued that that's old-school thinking. "We define a PC as a self-contained personal computer, with a display 7-in. or larger, that can, if necessary, operate without an attached power supply," said Tom Evans of Canalys, in an interview Thursday.

"People aren't going to be purchasing tablets rather than mobile phones," said Evans, explaining the 7-in. rule. "We look at purchasing behavior, which shows, for example, that people are upgrading their own notebooks at a slower rate than they were before because they're buying tablets. And the netbook market is in decline because it's been directly impacted by tablets."

Tablets are such a huge part of today's PC story, Evans argued, that ignoring them is a mistake when estimating system sales.

One side effect of Canalys' approach is that it shows the PC industry is not in the dire straits declared by other research firms.

Using Canalys' definition of PC, the industry actually grew by nearly 12% in the second quarter over the same three-month stretch in 2011. That's a much brighter picture than the ones painted by Gartner and IDC, two U.S.-based research companies that last month pegged the quarter as down 0.1% from the same period the year before.

"If you're not counting tablets, [sales] certainly are dismal," said Evans. And he asserted that tablets are PCs, not only to buyers but also to hardware makers. "They need to know what products they want to release," he said, talking about computer vendors, called OEMs, for "original equipment manufacturers," in tech-speak. "They have to look at everything when they decide what to develop, and a big part of that is looking at tablets."

Of the 108.7 million PCs sold in the second quarter, 73% were powered by Windows, said Evans, a record low for the Microsoft operating system. "Windows PC shipments continue to disappoint," he said, adding that "ultrabooks," the thin, lightweight notebooks pushed by Intel, have not reached the price points that will get people buying.