Chart of the day: Apple as the world's No. 1 PC maker
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt February 7, 2013: 5:46 AM ET
Source: Canalys. Chart: PED
FORTUNE -- Market researchers at Canalys made headlines Wednesday when they reported that Apple (AAPL) was the world's No. 1 personal computer manufacturer in Q4 2012 with shipments of 27 million PCs -- almost twice as many as No. 2 Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).
It was a finding that flew in the face of the "Apple is doomed" meme, and only makes sense if you consider the iPad (or for that matter, Kindle Fire) a personal computer -- something neither IDC nor Gartner is willing to do. When you view the PC market as Canalys does, it looks like the chart above, where one in six PCs shipped last quarter was an iPad.
