Apple's Q4 2011 results makes it the largest PC maker

Last week Apple released their calender Q4 2011 results (Q1 2012 for Apple fiscal year). The 37,044,000 iPhones sold makes them the largest smartphone maker for Q4 2011. They also sold 15,434,000 iPads, 1,479,000 Mac desktops, and 3,719,000 Mac laptops. This adds upto 20.6 million personal computing devices sold in the quarter. This, according to research firm Canalys, makes Apple the largest personal computing device maker. The analysis obviously considers a tablet like the iPad as a personal computer (PC), which I think is about right. 

"Hi, we're both PC's now!"

I'm not sure how Canalys predicted that Apple has sold more PC than HP, as HP's 4Q 2011 (calender) results are still not public, but maybe they have estimated the numbers. But if these numbers are correct, then we are seeing an interesting change. The "WinTel" (Windows OS running on Intel processors) duopoly is seriously challenged. The rise of the iPad, and it's challenge to the WinTel PC is very well documented by Horace Dediu in his blog.

It would be interesting to see what happens to Microsoft once they lose the dominance of the personal computing market. It may be a step back in time... back to the eighties, when Microsoft was writing applications for Macintosh! This was, of course, before Windows and Office took off. Maybe Microsoft will get back to writing applications for iOS and OSX devices. That would be interesting indeed!