Research firm Canalys is reporting that Apple surpassed Hewlett-Packard in the fourth quarter of 2011 to claim the title of top PC maker – but the company is once again counting tablets as PCs.
Canalys said 120 million PCs were shipped globally last quarter, up 16 percent from the same time last year. Of those, 15.43 million were Apple iPads and 5.2 million were Macs, accounting for 17 percent of the total, Canalys said.
Apple confirmed those numbers last week when it released its record-breaking fourth quarter results.
While Apple saw significant gains, all of the other top five PC makers, save for Lenovo, gave up market share. Lenovo saw a meager 2 percent gain. Canalys said HP, which landed at the number-two position, was the "hardest hit," and will struggle to compete with Apple, especially after it pulled the plug on the TouchPad.
"Currently, HP is pursuing a Windows strategy for its pad portfolio, producing enterprise-focused products, such as the recently launched Slate 2, until the launch of Windows 8," Canalys analyst Tim Coulling said in a statement. "However, questions remain over Microsoft's entry into the consumer pad space. While early demonstrations of the Windows 8 operating system seem promising, Microsoft must focus its efforts on creating an intuitive user experience that is far less resource intensive."
Lenovo came in behind HP at number three, with Dell and Acer taking fourth and fifth places, respectively.
But these titles depend on a very important (and hotly debated) question: do tablets count as PCs? Canalys, of course, includes tablets in its research, but other firms like IDC do not. PCMag laptop analyst Eric Grevstad took on this question in November when Canalys predicted that in the first half of 2012, Apple would overtake HP as the top PC vendor.
If tablets were excluded from the Canalys report, it would be a very different story. Absent these devices, Canalys said PC shipments actually declined 0.4 percent.
Grevstad concluded that though there is a very convincing argument in favor of counting tablets as PCs, Canalys is incorrect in counting tablets as PCs. However, in this "post-PC era" the definition seems to be evolving.
Apple would likely be fine with having the iPad included with PC numbers. Its recent earnings stats revealed that Apple sold more iPads last quarter than HP sold computers.