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Apple Is Top 'Mobile PC' Vendor, DisplaySearch Says

If notebooks and tablets are lumped together, the mobility crown should be handed to Apple, a DisplaySearch report concluded Wednesday.

DisplaySearch combined Apple's MacBook and iPad sales and named Apple the leading vendor of "mobile" PCs for the fourth quarter. HP was second, followed by Acer, Dell, and Toshiba.

In total, worldwide mobile PC shipments reached 59.6 million, up 8 percent from the prior quarter and 17 percent from the same period a year ago. But excluding tablets, notebook sales were up just 1 percent from a year agoand 4 percent sequentially.

Apple sold 10.2 million tablets and notebooks, for a 17.2 percent share. HP sold 9.3 million units, for a 15.6 percent market share.

"While we anticipate increased competition in the tablet PC market later this year with the introduction of Android Honeycomb-based tablets, Apple's iPad business is complementing a notebook line whose shipments widely exceed the industry average growth rate," said Richard Shim, senior analyst at DisplaySearch, in a statement. "Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs. Cannibalization seems limited at this point."

Shim said that both Apple and Toshiba were the only companies to grow their shipments on a year-over-year basis. DisplaySearch didn't provide year-over-year growth figures for the individual companies.

Acer, which included the Founder brand, sold 8.4 million mobile PCs, worth 14 percent of the market. Dell sold 5.9 million units, or 9.9 percent of the market, and Toshiba sold 5.1 million units, or 8.6 percent of the market. The top brands accounted for 65.4 percent of the market, DisplaySearch said.