Apple completes the Q4/2011 picture, comes out on top

…depending on how you count PC sales.

So here are the two graphs we’ve all been waiting for.

Q4/2011 PC Shipment Market Share (with iPad)

Q4/2011 PC Shipment Market Share

Top 5 PC Vendors (iPad included)

Overall shipments:

All this is re-affirmed what I wrote in my article analyzing the PC market (and Asymco’s graph).

Overall PC sales aren’t „tanking“. They fell by 1.4%. What Apple is currently eating up is any possible growth, which must frustrate PC retailers, especially when you look at the numbers for the Mac: 0.7% growth overall, 25% year-to-year if you don’t count the iPad (which wie do so 0.7% it is), which is against overall market development. It is clear that Mac sales are profiting from iOS customers coming over to the Mac platform, most likely because the „back to the Mac“ strategy is working with the Mac App store. HP lost nearly 4% of its market share when you count the iPad as a PC but that is obviously because they irritated customers by announcing they were selling off their PC business, firing their CEO and then back-tracking on the sale.

Apple today reported that their tablet sales overtook HPs PC sales (in units). Apple CEO Tim Cook expects this to be the case for the whole market in the future (more tablets sold than PCs). What is wrong IMHO is the expectation by analysts in the past and most likely again today and in the coming days that the PC market will suffer extremely because of the iPad (at least in its current form). To me the tablet market is a whole new market or better replacing a market. Acer IS tanking and at least to me that is the indicator. They are losing because their sales were heavily based on cheap-o Laptops and Netbooks. In this many analysts are right – the tablets are taking away that market segment. PC makers are suffering in that area but keep in mind that that market segment wasn’t even there to begin with five years ago, that almost every PC maker tried it out and almost all of them (except Acer) left it in a hurry when they found that it was just a fad because those machines are basically able to do everything but nothing in an acceptable manner.

Apple is crushing the Netbook market, plain and simple, replacing it with the tablet market and blowing it up to never before seen proportions. Who would have thought that there is a market for a device below the Notebook that could offer such extreme growth and revenue potentials. I expect the Netbook-Market to be gone and replaced by tablets with wireless keyboards (e.g. iPad with Bluetooth keyboard) in the near future, meaning that Leo Apotheker wasn’t only wrong trying to sell off the PC market but it was also desastrous to shut down their (Palm) tablet business.

But there will always be a need for PCs with a mouse and a large screen. There simply is no replacement for the mouse yet and neither is there one for large, transportable displays. People are simply faster selecting things on the screen with the mouse (especially when they need both hands to balance the screen they are choosing an item on) and there simply is no alternative to display techniques needing a big, flat surface to display things on. And those surfaces usually are heavy and can’t be folded or rolled. As long as there isn’t a technology available transporting a (virtual) large screen, 24″ and larger monitors won’t go away and with that the market for Desktop PCs.

The only way I see for the iPad to cannibalize said market is if Apple manages to offer an iPad with a powerful graphics chip capable of displaying large resolutions to an external monitor.

iPad 3 with Retina Display and Thunderbolt anyone?

Sources:

Gartner: Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments in Fourth Quarter of 2011 Declined 1.4 Percent (Q4/2011)
Apple:  Apple Reports First Quarter Results (Q4/2011)