Apple At The Top Of The Mobile Market Game
February 17th, 2011 | by Mobile Data Group |Apple is selling more portable computers than any other manufacturer.
Including the iPad, Apple sold 17.2 per cent of mobile computers worldwide in the October-December quarter, according to a report published by research group Display Search. That’s even more than Hewlett-Packard, the world’s top PC maker.
Apple has sold nearly 15 million iPads in its first nine months on sale, including 7.3 million in the most recent quarter alone. Without the iPad, Apple is the world’s eighth-ranking PC manufacturer.
Apple’s lead doesn’t mean people are buying iPads instead of larger laptops and desktops, said DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim. Rather, it’s selling best in countries where most people already own computers. He said that even though the iPad is relatively inexpensive, with a starting price of $US499 in the US ($629 in Australia), consumers in emerging markets can only afford one computer and are likely to buy one that’s more powerful, and not necessarily more portable.
“In emerging markets, PCs are still aspirational,” Shim said. “They’re looking for the most computing capability they can get for their dollar. In those cases they’re gravitating more towards a fully configured PC. In some cases toward desktops.”
Shim added that Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market for at least a year or two, even though companies such as Motorola will begin selling tablets running Google’s popular Android software, commonly found on smartphones.
In that case, too, it’s not that people are buying phones instead of PCs. Sales of personal computers are slowing because many consumers already own them and only tend to replace them every three to five years, compared with every two years for phones.