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Tablets overtake laptops, just as Steve Jobs predicted
John Paczkowski of AllThingsD has an interesting story this morning, noting that PC shipment data released by NPD DisplaySearch indicates that tablets like the iPad will outship notebooks this year. That statistic once again points out how prescient late Apple CEO Steve Jobs was about the future of tablets as computing devices. At the D8 conference back in 2010, Steve Jobs compared the transition from desktop and laptop PCs to tablets with the transition from trucks to cars. His comparison noted that trucks were initially more popular than cars since the U.S. was a much more agrarian country in the early 20th century, but that as the nation became much more urbanized, cars took over sales. Trucks are still around, but they're not the dominant form of vehicle in the country. Likewise, Jobs said that eventually "PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people." It took only three years for tablets to overtake laptops in sales by almost 16 percent. Jobs believed that some day only a small percentage of people would need a traditional computer, and that day is getting here faster than we can imagine.
NPD study finds average display sizes continuing to rise in all areas but laptops and tablets
Not exactly a huge surprise here, but a new study out from NPD DisplaySearch today has confirmed that the trend towards larger screens in continuing at a steady pace in all but a few key areas. The big exception is "mobile PCs," which NPD defines as laptops and tablets for its purposes. That area dropped from a 13.6-inch average in 2010 to 12.1-inch in 2012 (with an ever so slight increase to 12.2-inches projected for 2013), a drop that represents a ten percent decrease overall and is largely attributed to the growth of tablets . All other areas have seen small to significant growth in recent years, with LCD TVs growing 9 percent, mobile phones increasing 38 percent, and portable media players jumping 29 percent. The biggest growth, by far, comes in OLED TVs, which have gone from a mere 15-inch average in 2010 to an average of 55-inches today -- a growth of 267 percent.
NPD: Apple, Samsung control 55 percent of the smartphone market, prepaid sales up 91 percent
According to NPD Group, Apple and Samsung control more than half of the American smartphone market. The second-quarter figures reveal that while contract phone sales are flatter than month-old soda, those for pre-paid handsets have shot up by 91 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The upswing is credited to last year's flagship handsets falling down the price ladder, snaring lower-income customers who were unable to afford to be early adopters. Cornering that element of the market has helped the battling duo increase their sales by 43 percent, leaving the rest of the technology pantheon scraping around for crumbs. Speaking of which, HTC is a distant third, having 15 percent of the market, while Motorola (12 percent) and LG (six percent) round out the top five.
NPD Q1 2012: Apple still king of the mobile computing hill thanks to iPad
NPD DisplaySearch is declaring Apple to be the undisputed champion of the mobile PC business for the first quarter of the year. The fruity phone flinger shipped (shipped, not sold) 17.2 million mobile PCs in the time, a figure that contentiously includes the iPad. Second place was taken by HP, which packed off 8.9 million units -- enough to put it at the top of the Laptop-only chart. It's a familiar story over on the tablets leader-board, too. Cupertino pushed out 13.6 million iPads to maintain first place, while Samsung took the silver medal after packing off 1.6 million of its numerous Galaxy slates. Surprisingly, Amazon only needed to ship 900,000 Kindle Fires to take third, although given that the bookseller never discloses its numbers, we have to take that last number with a dash of disbelief.
Apple tops 2011 mobile PC sales if iPad is included
According to an NPD DisplaySearch report, Apple was the top mobile PC vendor for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the rest of the year -- if you consider iPads to be mobile PCs. In the fourth quarter, Apple shipped almost 23.4 million MacBooks and iPads, and over 62.8 million for the entire year. The NPD numbers show that almost 80 percent of the Apple totals consisted of iPads (18.7 million in the fourth quarter, 48.4 million for all of 2011). The analysis for that final quarter of 2011 shows that when considering tablets alongside notebooks, Apple had a 59.1 percent share of the market. Amazon shipped an estimated 5.3 million units (about a 16.7 percent market share) during that time, showing the popularity of the Android-powered, US$199 Kindle Fire. When looking at notebook computers only, HP was the winner, shipping 8.7 million notebooks in the fourth quarter. Apple was in fifth place behind Dell, Acer, and Lenovo with only 4.6 million MacBooks sold. NPD said that the numbers for notebooks were flat for the fourth quarter, while the year-over-year numbers showed sales up about 11 percent.
NPD: Apple grabs over a quarter of the mobile PC business in Q4 2011 (including iPads), HP tops with laptops
Just what is a "mobile PC" these days? According to market research firm NPD, that category now includes both tablets and laptops -- and by that definition, Apple is unsurprisingly way ahead of its competitors. Based on its preliminary numbers, Apple shipped 23.4 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2011 (nearly 80 percent of which were iPads), which was enough to snag a market share of 26.6 percent (and keep it in the top spot for the year). In contrast, the four companies rounding out the top five relied almost entirely on laptops to fill their numbers, with HP coming in at just under a 10 percent market share, followed by Dell, Acer and Lenovo. Looking just at laptops, however, HP comes in first with a 15.5 percent market share, while Apple falls to fifth with just over eight percent. As for tablets, Apple is estimated to have a 59 percent market share for Q4, followed by Amazon at 16.7 percent (based on shipments of 5.3 million), and Samsung, ASUS and Barnes & Noble each in single digits. Additional numbers can be found in the press release after the break and at the source link below.
