HP reclaims top spot in PC sales, market as a whole climbs 21 percent
Well, Apple's reign atop the list of the world's top PC makers was short lived. After clawing its way into the lead, if you counted the iPad as a PC, HP is back atop the heap — even with Cupertino's tablet-inflated numbers.
Context & Ripple Effects
The top of the PC chart has been a definitional fight all year: once Canalys-style tallies counted the iPad as a PC, Apple clawed into the lead, briefly displacing HP despite Cupertino shipping no traditional laptops or desktops at the top of its range. That lead came on the back of a tablet business where HP itself had quietly become the world's No. 2 tablet maker by late 2011.
This quarter flips the order again: the whole market climbed 21 percent, but HP grew enough to retake first place even with Apple's tablet-inflated numbers in the count. The pickup across syndication — ZDNet, Business Insider, AppleInsider and others running the same figures — shows how much weight analysts now put on these blended rankings.
First-order effects
- HP regains the No. 1 position in worldwide PC shipments, reclaiming the marketing crown from Apple after a single quarter out of the top spot.
- Apple's claim to leading the 'PC' market evaporates under this counting method, leaving its iPad-led total second even before any dispute over whether tablets belong in the category at all.
Second-order effects
- Vendor share claims become hostage to research-firm methodology, so HP and Apple will each cite whichever tally flatters them — fragmenting what 'market leader' means for enterprise buyers and press alike.
- A 21 percent market-wide climb pressures every other major vendor to show comparable growth or cede shelf space and channel attention to HP and Apple in the next refresh cycle.
Third-order effects
- If touch-and-tablet form factors keep driving growth, PC rankings will increasingly be decided by how firms define the category rather than by traditional notebook and desktop demand alone — making vendor league tables an argument over definitions, not just volumes.
- Sustained double-digit growth in a blended tablet-plus-PC market would shift supplier and component allocation toward devices that straddle both categories, eroding the line that separated the two businesses.
The trend: PC market leadership is becoming a function of counting methodology, as tablet growth keeps flipping the top spot between traditional PC makers and Apple.