Dell's Number Two In The PC Market Again, Thanks To The iPad

Having languished in third place behind Hewlett-Packard and Acer for some time, Dell finally scrambled its way back to the PC market’s number two spot during the fourth quarter of 2010, a new survey by research firm iSuppli says. What’s strange is the unusual quarter from which Dell got some help: Apple’s iPad.

Acer had a tough time in the consumer market as the iPad cut into its consumer netbook sales, giving Dell, still strong in the healthy market for corporate PCs, the opportunity it needed to edge ahead of Acer by nearly two percentage points. ISuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins says it looks like a “firm lead.” Dell also edged out Acer for the number two spot for the entire year, iSuppli says. (Table courtesy iSuppli.)

Overall, iSuppli says the fourth quarter set a record for overall PC shipments with more than 93 million units, up nearly 5 percent from the same period in 2009. For the year, global PC shipments amounted to 345.4 million units, up 14.2 percent from 302.4 million in 2009.

Lately PC market analysts have been blaming Apple and its industry-changing iPad — the second iteration of which goes on sale tomorrow – for damaging the fortunes of PC makers. In this odd case it’s being seen as hurting one to the advantage of another. I have to wonder if Michael Dell feels at all thankful.

http://www.facebook.com/bobsentell Bob Sentell

How is the iPad responsible? Total industry was up and every OEM was up. Even Acer was up. Dell’s turnaround could have easily come without the iPad’s “influence” on the market. The quality of Dell PCs have been improving.

The number I’m most interested in is that top number of HP selling 64 million PCs last year. Imagine every one of those PCs running webOS….
http://twitter.com/Fourthletter58 Fourthletter58

Dell sell Netbooks just like Acer, your iPad link is pulled from your own imagination simply to attract page views.
Shame on you !
http://www.facebook.com/bobsentell Bob Sentell

You know who else sells a lot of netbooks? HP. And they still saw an 8% total growth rate.

So again, what effect is the iPad having?
Anonymous

Wow, looks like iPad is just cool like that. Well done.

http://www.anonymous-web.at.tc
http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com Arik Hesseldahl

@fourthletter58 Nonsense. The claim regarding the iPad is iSuppli’s and their argument is simple. iPad ate into Acer’s consumer business. Since Dell is strong in corporate sales, where Acer is weak, Dell did better and passed Acer.
Anonymous

HP and Dell sell more desktops and notebooks and fewer netbooks by far than Acer.
Anonymous

Sales are up year over year, but they are always up year over year, that is a useless statistic. Growth is what is down significantly, unless you count the iPad as a PC, then growth is what was expected.

80% of the 20 million iPad buyers said they bought iPad instead of a PC. Those lost PC sales have to come from somewhere.

This is actually not controversial at all.
Anonymous

Also, by the time HP ships its 64 millionth WebOS device, Apple will be selling 64 million iPads per year, as well as iPhone, iPod touch, Macs, and AppleTV. iOS apps are already running on the Mac via simple porting instructions Apple released a while ago with Mac App Store. And it remains to be seen if WebOS on Windows gets any use at all by HP users, or if it even ships.

Good luck to HP, they have by far the best-looking iPad clone, but they have yet to actually ship. They have a lot of work to do yet. They are at least 3 years behind Apple in app platform and even further behind in number of users.

Dell's Number Two In The PC Market Again, Thanks To The iPad

comments so far. Add yours.

AllThingsD by Writer