Canalys: Apple Tops in Tabluters

05 MAY 2022 - Here’s a sort of silly story making the rounds again: A new report from Canalys says Apple is the world’s No. 1 computer-maker, if you count tablets as computers, which they technically are but almost no one does.

Why do that? If you’ll allow me, I can see a day where we don’t even think about computers as physical things anymore. A day where we think in terms of thinking. Of communication. Where what we’re talking to - tablet, laptop, smartphone, unseen server, wearable of some sort - won’t matter as much as what it’s doing for us. 

That is not the world we live in today. And yet, Canalys says “Apple is the number one computer maker,” then people read the article and go, “oh, okay, that’s cute.” 

I’m just saying you could talk about the fact that the tablet category is still beating pre-pandemic levels and Apple still owns it. You could focus on the fact that, despite Apple not having nearly enough to meet demand, iPad won the first-quarter of 2022 walking away. Though their shipments did decline 2% year-over-year (while global tablet shipments fell 3%), iPad’s marketshare actually grew - from 38.2% in the first quarter of last year to 38.6% last quarter. By Canalys’ own estimates, Apple shipped 14.9-million iPads last quarter - nearly double the 7.9-million shipped by second place Samsung. 

Indications from Canalys are that the tablet market is in for a rougher time of it this quarter. A few factors will contribute, including off-and-on COVID lockdowns in China, continuing component shortages, and manufacturers pulling sales out of Russia because Russia barged into Ukraine.