iPads propel Apple to PC market top slot Apple is now the world's leading personal computer seller, having pushed past HP in Q4 2011, market watcher Canalys said today. Apple shipped 15m iPads and 5m Macs - 20m units that together amount to 17 per cent of the 120m PCs that shipped around the globe during the final three months of 2011. Take the iPads out of the …
Exactly what I thought, saying the market would have shrunk without tablets is like saying "You wouldn't have got cancer if you didn't smoke"! The PC market may well have grown without the new form factor (i.e. if Tablets didn't exist).
Given the cost of Tablets, PC's etc and the current economic climate I'm not at all surprised that people are buying one or the other - no bugger can afford both!
Interesting stats though, I've been toying with the idea of a tablet
So tablets are PC's now??? That's crazy.
Yeah it's a Personal Computer in the same sense my damned phone is (though my phone also makes & receives calls, making an iFad less functional), but would you seriously use a tablet to do the stuff you do on a PC?
Yes, compose email. Yes surf the web.
No, non-linear video editing. No, graphics retouching/editing.
Yes I'm sure you CAN edit audio and video on a tablet but you know what I mean. PROPERLY. Even the most awkward and bloody-minded of you lot know what I'm getting at.
If you're including tablets then you must include phones as they have the same functionality in a smaller form factor or does a 'PC' have to have a minimum screen size of, say, an Apple tablet device and no phone ability (until Apple put it in then it MUST have it, presumably) to qualify?
I smell fudge and not in a good way.
When your Prime has more cores, at higher clocks, faster video and running similar resolution to a soon-to-be-obsolete desktop, then yes...I don't see why it can't be included.
No video editing? No graphics retouching? These are your criteria of a PC? Isn't that a wee bit...specific?
And the definition of a "Personal Computer"...chances are the tablet is ironically more personal, as its usually only used by you...a desktop is often shared - both in personal and business Environments.
Don't get me wrong - I do agree with you - something doesn't seem quite right to include tablets in the PC bracket, but I won't argue against anyone who wants to.
By that logic, then new game consoles, cable set-top boxes, TV's... probably even refrigerators could be considered PC's, but they aren't. An iPad is a feature device (toy?) and is no replacement for a PC.
I am concerned about our current youth and their generation. If they're spending more time on a tablet than a proper computer, how is there any chance that they'll learn to type fast and accurately?
Besides the issues already raised in response, iMovie* does edit video 'PROPERLY', or at least up to the same standard as any other consumer video editor. You see all the video clips on your device, select portions of them and arrange them on a timeline, applying transitions if you like. See e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEaWuCrI24s . I'm sure you can grasp for a distinction from standard consumer desktop stuff but it'll be a post hoc effort.
Similar tools are available for audio and graphics retouching, similarly consumer focussed.
* and, yes, there's probably an Android equivalent though I lack the expertise properly to comment. Let's stick to the capability of tablets in general as the topic, shall we?
and for the majority of people a tablet and connected TV is all they need .. in fact I see a tablet or large smartphone per person and shared TV screens (as output devices for tablet controllers rather than interactive TV) as being the norm for personal 'computing' requirements.
Desktop/Tower PCs are for niche (power) users, laptops/air/lights are for business and some home users and tablets/smartphones for everyone else.
Most people just have no requirement for anything other than media browsing/consumption ... giving them complex OSes on super-fast hardware is just pointless; with the right software, less hardware) is more.
True tablets are technically computers (and PCs in the non-IBM clone usage). But so are games consoles. Have we started including those as PCs too? Certainly we didn't count them as computers when I was a kid: Speccy, C64, ST etc. were clearly computers, Atari 2600, SNES and Megadrive were clearly consoles. Tablets as a 3rd category doesn't really seem any harder unless we're dealing with a rare example of an actual Tablet-PC complete with keyboard and fancy rotating screen hinge.
"rare example of an actual Tablet-PC complete with keyboard and fancy rotating screen hinge."
So what's the difference between a tablet pc running windows 7 tablet edition, and a asus transformer running android?
Some of the older tablet pc's have less ram, less disk and less cpu than the asus transformer!
Why does the screen have to rotate?
ok, fair point. replace "rotating screen hinge" with "fancy screen attachment allowing tablet or laptop style uses". There's a handful of hybrid machines which blur boundaries (as there was with computer vs console distinction - e.g Amstrad's Megadrive/PC hybrid), but most machines fit into categories quite well. The main point was that including tablets as PCs makes no more sense than including consoles, and that for most machines the category is pretty clear - indeed as I pointed out above simple enough for a child to understand, its only pendantic adult arguments and edge cases that make it complicated.
I agree a tablet computer [of any brand] is a computing device, but I don't quite see them as "personal computers"
Do these unnamed analysts marry the 15M iPad sales to the 5M Mac sales to big up Apple or belittle HP?
I would like to know how many PCs HP sold as well as how many tablets they sold too. We know the HP tablet was short lived, but there were certainly enough of them sold last year, especially after HP's "fire sale" of these devices to their staff members
At the end of the day, the statistics don't show the true market trend. It's a bit of a true lie...
yeah, but Joe Punter wasn't doing anything before either...he was still using Facebook, email, IM & youtube when he had a PC.
Except now with a tablet it doesn't take 2-3 minutes to boot up, and you don't need to be sitting at the desk in the spare room to use it. It's also comfier than sitting with a laptop on your knee in the living room.
Face it; PC's and tablets have more power than the average user needs 95% of the time. It just so happens that a tablet is a more practical form for lounging on the Sofa with.
It depends on how 'locked down' the OS is .. some work PCs are deliberately restricted because having a general purpose computing device just is not required for most users and a security risk. Tablets/phones users have very little need for traditional compilers but I can see a use for the creation of 'macro' style interactions to perform common complex actions .. these might appear in time.
I've compiled C code on mobile devices before (e.g. Sharp Zaurus) and I've written BASIC programs on Tandy/Sharp 8-bit PCs such as the Model 100 and Pocket PCs .. You've got a Java VM on Android and you can run gcc as well.
I remember the era when we had 'Home Computers' that had custom graphics and sound, integrated Midi, audio ouputs etc. Consoles, that were basically Home computers with no keyboard and a simple OS. Then there were PCs with no custom graphics and bleep bleep sound.
I think the ipad has more DNA from a console.
Some dubious categorisation going on here. An iPad isn't really a PC in the same way that a G-Wizz isn't really a car!
Sure it can do many of the things a PC can do, play videos, go onto facebook, and maybe it fits the words "personal computer" better than a real desktop does, but it's still a device primarily designed for data consumption, not production. Sure, you *could* type your entire life story on an iPad, and I'm sure Mr Fry is doing just that as I type, but you'll end up with blunted fingers and probably some kind of compression fracture in all of your fingers from banging on that sheet of glass.
It's horses for courses. Most people don't really need a real desktop PC for what they do. I know my sister-in-law certainly doesn't. She can post up her inane facebook drivel (with humourous auto corrections) just as well from her phone than she can from a desktop of laptop machine.
It just goes to show that many desktop/laptop users didn't really need that full computer experience, so with any luck we'll shift them onto tablet, and the volume of spam email their infected desktop machines were spewing to all and sundry will plummet!
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