Originally Posted by Brooke Crothers, CNET
Are we in a post-PC era as the late Steve Jobs famously claimed? Not really, says IDC.
This ivory-tower debate resurfaced this week when market researcher Canalys said Apple had become the world’s largest PC supplier in the fourth quarter with about 17 percent of the worldwide market.
So, how did reigning PC king Hewlett-Packard suddenly drop to a distant No. 2 with only 12.7 percent? The iPad, of course. Apple shipped more than 15 million of those in the quarter, dwarfing any other so-called “client PC” device.
“We’re going through the biggest shift the PC industry has seen in 20 years,” Steve Brazier, CEO of Canalys, told CNET earlier this week–referring to the rise of tablets.
And Brazier offered an interesting insight about Amazon. That online retailer of books and other stuff–and the antithesis of device companies like Hewlett-Packard or Dell–could become the next device giant in a few years.
Again because of tablets. Amazon shipped just shy of 5 million Kindle Fire tablets in a couple of months, said IDC.