Apple blew away analyst estimates by posting record revenue of $46.33 billion and net quarterly profit of $13.06 billion in the year-ago quarter in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to revenue of $26.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion.
Apple sold a whopping 37 million iPhones, 15.43 million iPads and 5.2 million Macs in the last quarter.
Research firm Canalys announced couple of days back that Apple was the largest PC manufacturer in the world in Q4 2011 if one counted tablets like Apple's iPad.
"Canalys today announced that Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4. Overall, the total client PC market, including desktops, netbooks, notebooks, and pads grew 16% year-on-year. Excluding pads, the client PC market declined 0.4%. [..]
[..] Pads accounted for 22% of total PC shipments during Q4 2011. In addition to Apple’s strong performance, the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet by Barnes and Noble boosted volumes in the U.S. market, allowing both vendors to claim spots among the top five worldwide pad makers, in second and fifth place respectively."
As MacRumors points out, Apple would have managed to become the largest PC manufacturer in the world in Q4 2011 even without counting Macs as HP - the second largest PC Manufacturer is estimated to have sold around 14.7 to 15.3 computers.
Do you think tablets like iPads that offer some of the features of the computer and which finally works without connecting to the computer thanks to iOS 5's PC-Free features should be counted as PCs?
In my opinion, apple is top seller in the tablet range, nothing against the ipad, but at this point in time, no tablet is quite the same as a pc, be it with ios or android. They’re fun, you can do a lot with them, but they aren’t as fast as pc’s and nowhere as productive, so well, until they are, i’d say they should be put in a cathegory of their own.
agree. many things a PC can do that a tablet can’t. maybe if apple computers weren’t as pricey they’d sell more – the OS isn’t that hard to get adjusted to. many pros and cons of MacOS / Windows.
+1
Totally agree with jonas
define a computer……I would say in the standard definition of such a device then a tablet would be considered so, the fact a desktop or laptop can do more is immaterial look what a phone can do today compared to a PC of 15 years ago & that was a PC……
and to say macs are pricey is simply not true, compare a similar product and I mean build as well as spec and you’ll find PC manufacturers struggle against mac book airs etc….
what i am doing now for example, i’m replying to you, and watching a stream at the same time in a little part of the screen and seeing what my gf writes me in Fb, if a tablet is to be considered a pc it must be able to do this, and yes, i know you can switch between aps, but it simply isn’t the same thing. Multitasking is just a small example. There are still a lot of software tablets cant handle because of the power they lack. And a simple thing as watching a movie with subtitles is an horror if that movie is encoded in any other way than avi or mp4. With the way things are evolving, they will get there eventually, but as of now, tablets are tablets, and pcs remain pcs.
As for the money a mac costs, i own an alienware laptop so i’m for throwing a few extra € to have a different than average product, as long as it stays powerfull.
You buy what you want with your money, it’s just awesome to have the choice.
Tablets cannot be considered a pc because it’s user limited. You can’t downloads files as place anywhere. You can’t even upload like a normal pc. You can’t install codecs. It won’t open a ton of file formats that a normal pc can. Tablets is basically a tech toy. Internet browsing, games, light productivity.
nope, no one includes ipads in those stats..and ipad is a tablet not a f u c k i n g computer
nope, no one includes ipads in those stats..and ipad is a tablet not a computer