#tech notebook

Definitely. It can replace a "normal" computer for me. I can do everything I do on a computer on it. There is nothing that I can't do on my iPad. Via Apple Informatory: http://j.mp/iAPPLE

Amplify’d from www.mercurynews.com

Is the iPad a personal computer?

Palo Alto industry researcher Canalys this week insisted that it is -- and that it helped push global PC sales 19 percent higher and propelled Apple -- the Cupertino maker of Macs and "i" devices -- to No. 3 in market share in the holiday quarter.

"Pads gave the market momentum in 2010, just as netbooks did the year before," Canalys senior analyst Daryl Chiam wrote in an e-mail.

But are pads really PCs? Yes, as much as netbooks are, Chiam wrote: "With screen sizes of seven inches or above, ample processing power and a growing number of applications, pads offer a computing experience comparable to netbooks. They compete for the same customers and will happily coexist."

According to Canalys' analysis, Palo Alto tech titan Hewlett-Packard shipped 18.7 million PCs in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 2.9 percent from a year earlier. HP was No. 1 in market share at 17.7 percent, but that dropped from 20.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Taiwanese computer maker Acer was No. 2, with 13.6 million PC shipments (up 8.8 percent); its market share dropped to 12.8 percent from 14 percent.

Combining iPads and Macs, Apple's holiday-quarter shipments skyrocketed 241 percent to 13.6 million, according to Canalys. Apple's market share jumped to 10.8 percent -- pulling ahead of Dell and Lenovo -- from 3.8 percent a year earlier.

"Each new product category typically causes a significant

shift in market shares," Chiam explained. "Apple is benefiting from pads, just as Acer, Samsung and Asus previously did with netbooks. The PC industry has always evolved this way, starting when Toshiba and Compaq rode high on the original notebook wave."

References

^ MercuryNews.com (MercuryNews.com)

^ SiliconValley.com (SiliconValley.com)

^ Twitter.com/mercspike (Twitter.com)

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