Apple Leads Notebook Market (If You Consider the iPad a Notebook)

With the iPad, Apple is dominating the tablet market and depending of what sort of device you consider it to be, the notebook market as well. Among the top six notebook vendors– Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Samsung–Apple ranked last in global market share in the second quarter of 2011, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore. But that's without the iPad. With it, Apple was the single largest notebook vendor during the period with a 20 percent market share–greater than the 15 percent held by PC giant Hewlett-Packard.   An interesting exercise, regardless of how you view tablet computers. To some, the tablet is an entirely new category of device; to others–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, for example–it's just another PC. And the difference between the two is the difference between market leader and market laggard, though as Whitmore observes, Apple could hardly be considered the latter.

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