If the PC industry was waiting for a reason to embrace the tablet, they need only talk to the folks at Canalys. The research firm – the first to view tablets as PCs – said Thursday PC sales experienced 187.9 percent year-over-year growth when the iPad was lumped in with sales.
Apple was displaced by Dell from the No. 3 spot it held during the last quarter of 2010 by just a measly 1.5 million units. However, the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant shipped 74 percent of the 6.4 million tablets sold during the first quarter, the research firm announced.
“Taking into consideration the iPad’s ‘halo effect’ on the company’s other products, Apple has grown considerably in most markets worldwide,” analyst Tim Coulling said. “As the iPad 2 and its competitors continue to roll out, we expect pad sales to propel PC market growth for the rest of the year,” he adds.
As Apple led the PC revolution, it appears the iPad maker will also lead the transformation to tablets. The slim majority of Dell (1.5 million) also reveals how important it will be for Apple to ensure a strong supply chain feeding consumers hungry for products.
[Fortune]
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.
2 responses to “Report: Apple Controlled 74 Percent of Tablet Market in First Quarter”
“However, the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant shipped 74 percent of the 6.4 million tablets sold during the first quarter, the research firm announced.”
Incorrect. It should be “… tech giant shipped 74% of the 6.4 million tablets shipped during …”. The Canalys reports uses the term shipments throughout.
There is a crucial difference between shipped and sold. It is brought up again and again and again in earnings reports and conference calls. Shipped is what leaves the factory, sold is what customers bought. Then there are Sell In and Sell Through, which are roughly analogous to shipped and sold.
E.g. last Q, per their 10-Q, Apple shipped 4.7million iPads, *BUT* actually sold 5.1million iPads. Contrast this to estimates that Motorola shipped 500k Xooms but sold 50-200k of them. Apple is a rare beast in that, except for when the products are refreshed, their shipped and sold numbers are very close to each other. The same is not true for competitors, especially in the tablet arena.
A report tracking tablet sales would have Apple with much higher than 74% share. No such report exists AFAIK.