As traditional PCs grow irrelevant, tablet shipments explode

• By Grant Brunner on February 1, 2013 at 2:45 pm
• http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/147397-as-traditional-pcs-grow-irrelevant-tablet-shipments-explode

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This is quickly turning into the decade of the tablet. In the last three years, tablets have grown at a rapid rate while traditional PCs are tumbling. Last month, predictions about tablets overtaking laptops this year started to pop up, and the holiday quarter numbers show that tablets are gaining huge ground on PCs. As of the fourth quarter of 2012, tablets shipped well over half the total number of traditional PCs.
In the fourth quarter, PC shipments totaled 89.8 million units. That’s a 6.4% drop from 2011′s holiday quarter. In comparison, 52.5 million tablets shipped in Q4 of 2012 — a 75.3% increase year over year (YOY). Tablets shipped 58% of the units that traditional PCs shipped, and that trend doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.
The lukewarm Windows 8 reception and the increasing competition in the tablet market highlight where this is all headed. Tablets are on the fast track to becoming the default when it comes to personal computing. Old-school mouse and keyboard PCs are slowly eroding in importance, and there is no way to deny it anymore.
As far as who is winning the tablet war, the answer remains Apple. It shipped 22.9 million iPads while the closest competitor, Samsung, shipped 7.9 million. That said, Apple is growing at a slower pace than some of its competition. The Cupertino company’s market share slipped to 43.6% — down 2.8% quarter over quarter (QOQ). While Apple maintained a very healthy 48.1% growth from Q4 2011, Samsung has experienced meteoric expansion of 263% growth. Combined with Amazon’s 26.8% and Asus’s 402.3% YOY growth, the second, third, and fourth place players make up 32.4% of the tablet market. That’s an impressive number considering that Apple was really the only player that mattered in 2010 when the iPad launched.
An article over at GigaOm points out a rather interesting fact: Most of the movers and shakers in the tablet market aren’t the big players in the PC market. The only company in the top five of both PC and tablet shipments is Asus. HP, Lenovo, Dell, and Acer remain rather impotent in the world of tablets. Apple and Samsung are the top players in the smartphone market. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are forces in the media end of things.
Frankly, it’s not surprising that the HPs and Dells of the world missed the boat on smartphones and tablets. They grew fat and happy, and better — or at least more innovative — companies came in to completely disrupt their world. Tablets are an important aspect of the near future of tech, and the companies that don’t accept that are going to be left behind.
Now read: PC sales are in decline, and in an alarming way for the first time
[Image credit: Mike Lau]