Increased demand for the iPad helped Apple push past HP to become No. 1 in mobile PC shipments with 17 percent of the market during the fourth quarter of 2010, according to a research report released Wednesday. Apple shipped 10.2 million notebook and tablet PCs combined, almost one million units more than the market-leading PC maker, DisplaySearch announced.
“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,” Richard Shim, senior DisplaySearch analyst, said in a statement.
Although Apple is benefiting from “significant and comprehensive” growth in both PCs and tablets, “cannibalization seems limited,” according to the analyst. Toshiba was the only other PC maker displaying year-to-year growth, with a 15 percent increase of shipments to over 5.1 million units in the fourth quarter, helping it maintain its No. 5 position, according to the research firm.
HP, with 15.6 percent of the mobile PC shiments, ranked No. 2. Acer Group (including Founder shipments) ranked No. 3 with 14 percent of the market and 8.4 million units shipped. Dell ranked No. 4 with 9.9 percent of the shipments and 5.9 million units shipped, according to the new data.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
