Apple Becomes Leading PC Vendor, According to Canalys

To see a headline stating that Apple has become the world’s PC leader might result in some head-scratches, but once it’s realized that iPads are part of the equation, it begins to make a lot more sense. Kind of. You see, research firm Canalys doesn’t consider iPads and iPad minis to be too dissimilar from our desktops and notebooks – thus, they’re PCs.

If this all sounds familiar, you might be recalling an editorial I wrote a couple of years ago as a direct result of the same research firm hitting the headlines for the same classifications. The conclusion I ultimately reached was that because the general description of a “personal computer” could be applied to a tablet, the “PC” classification was fine. That doesn’t mean that I don’t consider it a bit strange even still, however.

Also strange is the fact that the firm still doesn’t consider a smartphone to be a PC, despite the fact that tablets offer the exact same thing but in a larger package. It’d be silly to bring the argument of size into things, as a tablet is much smaller than a desktop or notebook already, yet it’s still supposedly a PC.

What did Apple do to become top dog PC vendor? It shipped 27 million units in the last quarter, for the first time breaking through the 20% marketshare barrier. By contrast, HP shipped 15 million, Lenovo 14.8 million, Samsung 11.7 million and Dell, 9.7 million. And speaking of Dell, the report states that its shipments dropped 19% year-over-year, which makes the recent announcement of its buyout all the more reasonable.

That aside, do you think tablets should be lumped into the same category as our desktops and notebooks?