Apple grabbed 17.2% of mobile PC shipments in the October to December 2010 quarter, taking it past HP to become the biggest vendor in the world.
The figures, which include sales of the iPad, form part of the preliminary results of the DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report.
The report claims that Apple shipped more than 10.2 million MacBooks, MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, and iPads in the last three months of 2010. And while much of the overall growth in sales was down to the iPad, DisplaySearch reported that Apple’s notebook shipments continue to grow faster than the industry average.
‘While we anticipate increased competition in the tablet PC market later this year with the introduction of Android Honeycomb-based tablets, Apple’s iPad business is complementing a notebook line whose shipments widely exceed the industry average growth rate,’ said Richard Shim, Senior Analyst at DisplaySearch. ‘Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs. Cannibalization seems limited at this point.’
During the quarter, worldwide sales of notebook PCs and tablets reached 59.6 million, a year-on-year increase of 17%. Take tablets out of those figures, however, and the picture is not as rosy, with a year-on-year increase of only 1%.
DisplaySearch cross-checks supplier and buyer data to produce figures for worldwide and regional shipments.
Apple’s own quarterly results for the period reported iPad sales of 7.33 million. If DisplaySearch’s figures are accurate, that would mean that sales of Apple notebooks for the quarter were 2.87 million. Apple doesn’t breakdown its Mac sales by model or market segment, but did report overall Mac sales of 4.13 million for the quarter. That, again assuming DisplaySearch’s figures are accurate, would mean that sales of desktop Macs for the period were 1.26 million, or just over 30% of total Mac sales.
