iPad Sales Give Substantial Boost To Entire PC Market

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Turns out the iPad was one of the biggest selling things in the entire PC market, sufficiently big to put a serious spark under the entire industry’s sales. But despite this impressive bit of news, as it turns out, there’s a significant problem waiting in the wings for Apple, according to some numbers released recently by the folks at Canalys.

Basically, thanks to iPad sales, the entire PC market got an 18 percent bump in just the third quarter of this year alone. And indeed, iPad shipments were up fully 166 percent, from Canalys’ numbers.And Apple’s sales of 11 million iPads in the third quarter were sufficient to keep Apple at fully 15 percent of the PC market, coming in second to HP, who held the slimmest of whole-number leads at 16 percent.

But like the headline suggested, it wasn’t all good news for Apple. While they definitely put up a whole lot of iPads, Canalys’ numbers figure that Apple’s market share in tablets went from 91 percent in the third quarter of last year to just 67 percent this year.

This is the part where some can cry foul; market share is measured more in terms of shipments than in sales, meaning the various other tablet makers out there can ship as many tablets as they like, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple’s really losing ground. Still though, considering that Apple’s share dropped about a quarter in the span of one year does suggest that the tablet market is getting increasingly fragmented. And this makes sense; we’ve seen new tablets emerge from a variety of vendors–Samsung, Asus, Motorola, and a host of others–so anyone who buys one of these would naturally cost Apple a customer. Though just how much of a problem this will prove to be to Apple remains to be seen.

So what do you guys think here? Will Apple continue its dominance over the tablet arena? Who will prove to be an effective challenger for Apple’s control? Would you buy a tablet from anyone but Apple, and if so, who? No matter what you think about this, we’re waiting for you to tell us what you think in the comments section below!