Apple portables set to dominate latter half of 2011
According to Fortune, financial analysts from Deutsche Bank are predicting a rise in Apple's global portable computer sales for the rest of this year. If the iPad is included in those numbers, the rise is downright astonishing, taking Apple from last place among the six vendors studied all the way up to first.
Including the iPad in this analysis may seem a questionable move, but if you want to get technical about it the device is a portable computer. Analysis shows that even if the iPad isn't included in these numbers, Apple is still poised to see huge gains in 2011 thanks to the release of OS X Lion and high demand for the MacBook Air.
At the same time that Apple is expected to see sales and market share gains, every other PC maker is showing steep declines in Deutsche Bank's analysis. The firm cites "stagnation" in the Microsoft/PC market and notes that so-called "Ultrabooks" are not yet price-competitive with Apple's MacBook Air. The situation is even grimmer in the tablet market, which can still be handily summarized as "iPad... and then everything else."
Apple has warned investors to expect a decline in revenues for the next quarter due to a product transition. Without knowing what that transition is, we have no way of knowing how it will dampen the huge gains that Deutsche Bank and other financial analysts are predicting for the rest of the "Year of the iPad 2."
