iPad Growth Drives Apple to Top Mobile PC Share: NPD

Apple continues its unrelenting domination of the tablet market, with a whopping 62.8 percent first-quarter market share.

Apple€™s mobile PC business is booming, thanks mainly to exploding iPad sales, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of the company€™s overall mobile PC sales, according to figures from research firm NPD. Apple€™s iPad sales reached more than 13.6 million units in the first quarter of 2012, for 162 percent year-over-year growth. Overall, the company shipped nearly 17.2 million mobile PCs in that period, representing 118 percent year-over-year growth.

Strong tablet sales allowed Apple to dominate mobile PC market share for the quarter, with 22.5 percent. Its next-closest competitor, Hewlett-Packard shipped just 8.9 million mobile PCs for an 11.6 percent market share. Acer Group followed in third place, with 6.9 million units shipped and a market share of 9 percent, while Lenovo followed with 5.9 million units sold and a 7.7 percent market share. Dell rounded out the top five with 5.6 million units shipped and a 7.3 percent market share.

Apple completely dominated the tablet market in the first quarter, boasting a stunning 62.8 percent market share while shipping 13.6 million iPads. Samsung trailed far behind in second place, with 1.6 million tablets shipped and a market share of 7.5 percent. Amazon followed a distant third with 900,000 tablets shipped for a 4 percent share, followed by BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion and Asus, which both sold 500,000 tablets for a 2.3 percent market share.

Total mobile PC shipments in the first quarter of 2012 reached 76.2 million units, a seasonal drop of 15 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011. However, shipments grew 30 percent year-over-year, with tablet PCs growing 124 percent and notebooks and mini-notes growing 12 percent, suggesting the tablet market has room to grow. The report also noted China€™s strong quarter-over-quarter growth.

€œThe China region had sequential quarter shipment growth, achieving 13 percent for mobile PCs overall, 12 percent for notebook and mini-note PCs, and 16 percent for tablet PCs,€ Richard Shim, NPD DisplaySearch senior analyst, said in a prepared statement. €œThis is noteworthy, given the sequential declines in all other regions as well as the declines in other product categories, including TVs and monitors.€

In the mini-notebook and notebook segment, HP posted year-over-year growth of 700,000 units and led the market with 8.9 million units shipped, for an overall share of 16.2 percent. Acer followed with 6.5 million units shipped for a market share of 11.9 percent, followed by Lenovo (5.8 million units shipped and a 10.6 percent market share), Dell (5.6 million units and a 10.2 percent share) and Asus, which shipped 4.4 million units for an 8.1 percent market share.