In the first quarter of the year, Apple was beating HP when it came to number of computers shipped, mostly contributed to the launch of the iPad – more than 15 million iPads were shipped during the last quarter of 2011, which accounted for a whopping 17{7e4ee7cd997d36f6dec43befd6b19c37edf0959bbf61766e988f901dd91e96d7} of client PCs sold globally during that last quarter of the year. However, in the last quarter tallied, HP has finally taken over once more.
The lead wasn’t a solid lead – the total lead came in right around 40,000 units more than Apple – but it still means good things for HP. When iPads stole the show in the December quarter, Apple announced that the number of shipments didn’t actually meet expectations, even though they shipped over 11.8 million iPads last quarter.
However, this doesn’t seem to be a lead for long, considering that tablets seem to be taking over the market at an alarming rate – the growth each year seems to be around a 200{7e4ee7cd997d36f6dec43befd6b19c37edf0959bbf61766e988f901dd91e96d7} increase in the number of tablets bought. It could absolutely be anyone’s game next quarter, but professionals seem to think that the gap between number of computers sold and number of tablets sold will close within the next few years and that sales will likely increase next quarter and we may never see HP or any other company beat the sale of tablets with the personal computers – regardless of the company that’s selling them – again.
Still, sales do seem a little lopsided because of the amount of sales made of the iPad in the United States, and global sales still have not reached a point to where the next quarter can be accurately predicted.
Behind HP was Apple then Lenovo, Acer, and Dell.