Lenovo Displaces HP as World’s Top PC Maker!

Lenovo has unseated Hewlett-Packard as the world’s top PC maker, a position the company has held for six years, according to Gartner.

The researcher’s stats showed that 15.7% of global PC shipments in the third quarter came from Lenovo vs. 15.5% for HP. That’s the first time Lenovo has taken the No. 1 position. Gartner attributed the PC maker’s gains to aggressive pricing, especially in the professional market. Lenovo’s share has been steadily increasing over the past two years.

Lenovo’s gain came as PC sales declined 8% worldwide in 3Q, in a large part because buyers are holding off purchases of new PCs until Windows 8′s official release on Oct. 26. The U.S. picture was even grimmer: PC sales fell 13.8% for the quarter.

 

HP’s fall from the top spot comes amid a transitional period for that company. HP is in the midst of cutting 29,000 jobs — a process that will take until 2014 to complete. Like others, including Dell, HP has had a hard time transitioning to the so-called post-PC era. The company’s tablet PC, the TouchPad, flopped, leading the company to kill off the product in August 2011.

Nevertheless, not everyone agrees with Gartner’s estimate. HP questioned the figures and pointed to an IDC report also released on Wednesday that showed the company narrowly holding on to the top spot in 3Q.

Meanwhile, the primarily catalyst for the post-PC movement — Apple — didn’t make the top five in either list. If you consider a tablet a PC, as researcher Canalys does, though, then Apple is No. 1.

Here’s why Apple’s quarter is not only record shattering – it’s Historic !

Apple Smashes Expectations and is now the Top Smartphone Manufacturer in the World– the company ended up selling 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads eliciting comments as “numbers so big that they almost seem like they should be typos.”

That’s not just a record-breaking quarter – it’s a historic one, we need to put in the perspective of not only the industry but the global market to really see how successful Apple was.
Here’s the breakdown of the facts:

 – Apple’s $13 billion profits surpassed Google’s entire revenue of $10.6 billion. Actually, Apple’s profits for the year exceed Google’s revenue for the year as well.

– Apple’s $13 billion profits actually equaled Apple’s own revenue in Q4 2010. Which was only 15 months ago.

– Apple’s quarter is the second strongest in US history, the fourth strongest globally. It’s on that list with 18 other companies. You might notice all of the rest are oil and gas companies.

– Apple’s market cap makes its worth more than whole countries like Greece.

– Apple’s cash reserves now stand at $97.6 billion – which is more than all companies except for the biggest 52.

– Apple’s margins are staggering. While Walmart made nearly double the revenue, Apple had four times the profits.

– Apple’s gross margin for the quarter was 44.7% – so big, it got CFO Peter Oppenheimer stunned impressed and he’s been working at Apple for 15 years. 

– iPhone sales double with every new model: 

* In 2009, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007 and 2008 combined. 

* In 2010, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. 

* In 2011, Apple sold 93.1 million iPhones, slightly more than it did in in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined.

– Apple probably outdid Samsung in smartphone sales. With 37 million iPhones, Apple is way ahead of the 35 million Samsung smartphone sales guess. 

– Apple is also now back to being the world’s biggest smartphone maker.

– Apple sold more iPads than HP sold personal computers – 15.4 million iPads versus 14.7 million HP computers (Gartner’s estimate)

– The iPad market is now larger than the whole desktop PC market.

– iTunes alone brought 50% more revenue than Yahoo.

Clearly, this was a quarter that will be remembered. Apple is offering a lower guidance for the next quarter for a couple of reasons, but obviously the company is still growing. Could it outdo itself and surpise everyone again in the next quarters? Where it all of this headed for Apple? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

source: Daring Fireball, TechCrunch, @jlgolson