White issues a monthly “Apple Barometer” to help investors gauge its success, using data gathered from supply chain sources to anticipate Apple’s sell-through numbers. The barometer was up 17 percent during November versus the previous month, whereas normally it tends to gain around only 2 percent per month. Even though White says October wasn’t as strong as usual for Apple, the gain for November was still very strong and due mostly to amazing sales on Apple’s part for the month.

Over at Canaccord, Walkley didn’t have all good news for Apple watchers. In a note Tuesday, he said the firm expects Amazon’s Kindle Fire to take away as much as 20 percent of Apple’s tablet unit share between the third and fourth quarters of 2011. That’s not necessarily that bad for Apple, however, since the iPad is still projected by Walkley to sell more units than it did in the third quarter of 2011, with Amazon’s device just adding to the global tablet shipment forecast total. Plus, Apple seems to anticipate that more Kindle Fire sales should lead to more iPad sales down the road.

The iPhone, however, is unquestionably a success for Apple, prompting Walkley to bump his sales estimate of Apple’s smartphone from 29 million up to 30.5 million for the quarter, which is huge compared to the 17.1 million Apple sold last quarter. The iPhone’s sales success should see it gain back significant market share from Android competitors, according to Walkley.

Apple always has a strong holiday quarter, but with the late introduction of the iPhone 4S this year, and the continued success of the iPad 2, we definitely should see some entirely unprecedented numbers this time around.

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Net Applications gathers data from 40,000 websites that belong to its network of partners. According to traffic on those sites, Google’s mobile OS couldn’t keep pace with Apple’s growth, but did rise about 2.6 percentage points during the month. That, combined with Java ME’s nearly 6 point drop allowed it to move into second place. Apple’s huge gain during the month is most likely attributable to the introduction of the iPhone 4S, which sold 4 million devices in its opening weekend alone, though the continued strength of the iPad versus Android tablets also likely accounts for why Apple fared better than Google.

The impact of the 4S was also felt in mobile browser share, where mobile Safari’s share climbed from 55.59 to 62.17 percent between September and October. Google’s Android Browser, by contrast, was nearly flat, actually losing around 0.3 percentage points.

Apple’s growth propels it to a new high in terms of the history of Net Applications’ data tracking, and just reinforces the fact that when comparing market share in shipped versus sold terms, you can often misinterpret which OS actually has a lead in usage. The new data from Net Applications about OS and browser usage is much more relevant to mobile advertisers and developers since it presents a better idea of who’s actually accessing the web and applications from a specific platform more frequently.

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The numbers mean that Apple’s iOS devices (including the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad) together make up more than half of all web use originating from mobile devices. This is especially impressive when you consider that Apple’s mobile market share when measured strictly by device sales puts it well beyond Android, which powers smartphones and tablets from a wide range of manufacturing partners in more global markets.

Android, in contrast, accounted for only 16.26 percent of overall mobile web access in September, although that’s up slightly from August, when it was responsible for 15.98 percent. RIM’s BlackBerry platform lags behind at 3.29 percent.

What do these numbers mean? Basically, Apple device users seem to be much more prone to using their devices to access the mobile web. That’s also backed up by Apple’s continued dominance in mobile browser market share, where Safari ruled in September with 55.59 percent of all mobile browser impressions.

Usage stats are a good place for Apple to lead; it means customers are comfortable and happy with the experience that iOS provides, which should lead to greater loyalty and repeat business. It also means Apple is better able to woo developers and advertising partners, who recognize that the best mobile OS is the one most able to capture a user’s attention.

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Since the early adopter crowd is the group most likely to cycle through devices quickly, this makes sense. Android handset makers usually don’t adhere to any hard-and-fast update schedule, and they often release multiple devices or iterations of the same device within a single calendar year. If what you’re after is the latest available tech, Android has the edge, regardless of whether or not the overall user experience of iOS is arguably better.

Of course, it helps that Android has around a dozen hardware partners in the U.S. alone offering a variety of devices across all major carriers, but even among that crowd, some single device makers are beginning to pull away from the field with aggressive hardware upgrade plans.

The best example is Samsung, which announced a new 5.3-inch smartphone on Thursday at the IFA 2011 European tech conference. The new Galaxy Note, as the monster phone is called, also has a 1.4 GHz dual-core processor under the hood, as well as a pressure-sensitive touchscreen that can be used with a stylus for accurate drawing, sketching and writing. The huge 5.3-inch display boasts an impressive 1280×800 resolution, on par with many netbooks. Bristling with new shiny bits, it’s an early adopter’s dream device.

The features mentioned above won’t appeal to all, because as Steve Jobs has rightly pointed out in the past, most consumers are after an overall experience, not a list of specs. But one group, namely the early adopter group, is very much focused on the list of specs, and Samsung is showing that you can do well by appealing to that level of interest.

Early adopters buy early and buy often. The nature of Android devices makes it more possible for those on the edge to stay there, no waiting required. Given the rise in popularity of smartphones, combined with a generation of device buyers that grew up using them, we might see more and more consumers comfortable with device updates that are much more frequent than once (or less) yearly.

Apple doesn’t adhere to a strict yearly schedule with its Mac releases; approximately every six to eight months, it introduces minor overhauls and spec bumps when new processor tech is made available to keep its machines more or less current in terms of specifications. Doing the same with an iPhone might make sense and attract the wandering gaze of customers focused firmly on the horizon of mobile tech.

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Some might consider it contentious to include tablets in mobile PC rankings, but there are a few reasons it makes sense. First, consider that the PC industry is experiencing negative growth, at least in some markets, and slowing growth in others: DisplaySearch found that notebooks were up only 2 percent year over year this past quarter and were down 2 percent compared to the first quarter of 2011. At the same time, the tablet market is up. Tablet PC shipments rose 70 percent in the second quarter of 2011 versus the first and 400 percent year over year. Even without the iPad, tablet shipments were up 25 percent year over year, with more than 5.6 million shipped during the latest quarter, according to DisplaySearch.

The numbers suggest that some, at least, are replacing traditional mobile PCs with tablets, and especially with iPads. And that’s backed up by various observations. I see more iPads at events and conferences than I ever have before; in many cases notebooks are carried but remain in the bag while the tablet stays out. Also, friends who don’t use a computer very often outside work have been very happy to replace their notebooks and desktops with a tablet full-time. Surveys seem to be showing that these examples aren’t isolated statistical oddities.

Of course, Apple stands to gain the most from the inclusion of tablets, since the iPad remains the clear category leader. But the iPad 2 is apparently really helping things along. Late in 2010, we noted that Apple had reached the No. 3 spot in the mobile PC market, with iPads included. According to DisplaySearch, it now has 21.1 percent of the mobile PC market by shipments, while HP is the next closest, with 15 percent. Dell, Acer and Lenovo make up the rest of the top 5, with 11.6, 10.9 and 7.5 percent, respectively.

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Android and iOS combined represented a total of just under 62 percent of all worldwide smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2011, doubling the combined market share percentage of the Google and Apple smartphone platforms during the same period last year. Android and iOS were the only two major platforms that saw significant growth year over year, too. Nokia’s Symbian plummeted from 40.9 to 22.1 percent of global smartphone sales, while Research In Motion’s BlackBerry platform also stumbled from 18.7 to 11.7 percent. Microsoft didn’t fare well, either, falling from 4.9 to just 1.6 percent.

But taking a closer look at the combined Android and iOS 62 percent market share reveals that Google’s mobile OS, not Apple’s, is doing most of the heavy lifting. Android was the biggest gainer overall by a significant margin, growing from 17.2 to 43.4 percent of smartphone sales, while iOS showed more modest growth, going from 14.1 to 18.2 percent.

Still, Apple did more than double its total number of units shipped, from 8.7 million iPhones sold in the second quarter of 2010 to 19.6 million during the same time frame in 2011, even without a new hardware release. Apple also managed to climb to fourth overall in global mobile-device sales during the quarter, compared with a sixth-place ranking last year. Samsung, arguably Apple’s biggest competition in terms of hardware manufacturers, actually lost ground, falling 1.5 percentage points in worldwide handset sales year over year.

According to former Nokia executive and industry watcher Tomi Ahonen, who weighed in on the Gartner numbers on Thursday by combining them with sales data reported by major mobile manufacturers and other research firms like IDC, Apple is also on top of the heap when it comes to smartphone manufacturers, with 19 percent of market share for the second quarter of 2011. Ahonen also ranks iOS second in terms of overall operating system share, with 19 percent, edging out Nokia’s 16 percent. But even by Ahonen’s cumulative estimates, Android still has a dominant lead, with 41 percent of mobile OS share.

It’s easy to see this data point as yet another example of Android’s growing triumph over Apple in the smartphone battle, but that’s much too simplistic a view. Apple is still showing significant growth in worldwide smartphone sales, and it accounts for an increasing part of the device manufacturer picture. Android’s scattershot approach definitely has won it a presence in more markets at prices more affordable to a range of buyers, but Apple is still dominating the revenue picture. Also, some are beginning to think that Android might be poised to suffer a painful, drawn-out death by a thousand cuts from patent licensing issues, and Google’s recent decision to speak out against patent law seems to back that up.

Android may be doing most of the work when it comes to buoying the good ship smartphone, but Apple still seems to be plotting the course. As long as the growth of iOS stays positive and Apple keeps selling more and more hardware, the iPhone has nothing to fear from Android’s successes, in the same way the Mac line has nothing to fear from the PC industry it continues to be dwarfed by but also outpace.

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Android was the only other platform that gained share of smartphone subscribers during the quarter, growing 5.1 percentage points to 38.1 percent of the total pool and retaining its number one spot among mobile operating systems. All other major players besides Android and iOS lost share, with Research In Motion taking the hardest hit with a 4.2 percentage point drop for its BlackBerry OS, while Microsoft and Palm each shed 1.9 and 0.4 percent respectively.

While Android gained more ground than iOS in a smartphone market that grew 11 percent during the last quarter, Apple was the single biggest riser when it came to smartphone hardware growth. Apple rose 1.2 percentage points from 7.5 percent to 8.7 percent for the period ending in May, while Samsung, the market leader, remained flat at 24.8 percent. LG was the only hardware vendor besides Apple in the top five to gain ground, rising 0.2 percent, while both Motorola and RIM slid slightly.

The three-month period was a good one for Apple by comScore’s measures, and iOS continues to show positive growth despite Android’s expanding reach. Other recent studies and reports indicate that Apple may be beginning to claw back some of the ground given up to Android, too. But with iOS 5 and the wide release of Google+ on the way soon to shake things up, the smartphone game is becoming a very tricky one to call.

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Nokia sold 107 million freaking phones last quarter, as many as the next three competitors combined. Nonetheless, Nokia’s market share reached its lowest point since 1997. Likewise, Samsung, LG, and RIM also saw declines in market share year over year.

Only Apple, selling 16.9 million iPhones during the quarter and doubling sales year over year, saw its market share increase, from 2.3 to 3.9 percent. That made Apple the fourth largest purveyor of mobile phones. Considering the average selling price for an iPhone is about $650, that’s great news for Cupertino.

The bad news is Android. In terms of operating system market share trends, Google’s Android has won the platform war. For the first quarter of 2009, Android was powering just 1.6 percent of smartphones sold. Just three years later, Android is now running on more than a third of devices sold.

Against the Android onslaught, only iOS has manged to increase smartphone market share over the last three years, from 10.5 to 16.8 percent. Everyone else has seen their share plunge, with Symbian seeing the biggest drop, from 48 to 27 percent. But other competitors are no better off. RIM, which saw BlackBerry OS fall from 20 to 13 percent, is transitioning to its QNX operating system, but not until 2012. Microsoft, which launched Windows Phone last year, has thus far seen weak sales, with just 1.6 million devices in the first quarter. However, Gartner suggests that the transition by Nokia from Symbian to the Windows Phone operating will increase momentum for the platform.

While that’s possible, Gartner also asserts there is a shift towards an “ecosystem focus,” making users of a platform’s apps and services less likely to switch. That’s why Google and its free Android have such an advantage now, with only one real competitor, Apple, and only at the high end; but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Earlier this year, comments from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi in a meeting with Apple executives suggest that Apple may yet contest Google for Nokia’s market share. According to Bernstein, Apple COO Tim Cook said the company does not want its products to be “just for the rich,” and that Cook “appeared to reaffirm the notion that Apple is likely to develop lower priced offerings” in smartphones.

That sounds great, but simply offering an iPhone free with a contract, instead of for $99, won’t even slow Android down. We’re already seeing Android phones for a few hundred dollars without a contract. What Apple needs right now is a cheap iPhone. Really cheap, like about the price of an iPod touch, but more importantly it needs to be available without a data plan. While carriers would hate such a device, it’s hard to imagine them denying one access to their networks under regulator scrutiny. Those iPhone Lite users could access the Internet using Wi-Fi, and more importantly for Apple, the App Store, too.

“Ecosystem focus” is what matters as consumers abandon failed platforms like Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry OS. Google knows that. Apple does too, but an iPhone Lite without contract or data plan for $299 would reinforce the point.

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In a few weeks at WWDC, Apple fans can expect an exciting Keynote. Likely topics include OS X Lion, iCloud, and iOS 5, as well as news on the state of Apple and its products and platforms. In the past, that has included data on the ever-increasing number of iOS devices sold and growth of the platform, and the same can be expected this year; just don’t expect any more comparisons between iOS and Android on activations.

Tuesday, at the Google I/O Developer Conference, among announcements about a unified Android OS and Google music storage, there was also new information on Android’s growth, including a new record of 400,000 activations of per day. If past pronouncements apply, those activations only include devices that use Google services, with the vast majority being smartphones, not that it matters no matter how the numbers are counted. Android has passed iOS( not just the iPhone), in terms of sheer volume, for good.

Apple reported approximately 26 million iOS devices sold for the quarter ending in March. That number includes 16.2 million iPhones and 4.7 million iPads, and an estimated 5 million iPod touch devices. The latter is estimated because Apple does not break out iPods by model, but the company has repeatedly stated more than half of iPod sales are the iPod touch. In terms of activations, that works out to around 289,000 activations per day; far below Google’s latest numbers.

Of course, iPad supplies were constrained during the last quarter, but selling an iPad to everyone that wants one won’t change the numbers, either. By the end of June, Google should easily be activating 450,000 devices per day. Even assuming Apple sells 9 million iPads, 20 million iPhones, and 6 million iPod touches, that works out to 35 million iOS devices, or only 389,000 activations per day.

It’s over; Google and Android have won, at least in market share. But that’s not the whole story, at least not going by Google’s Android numbers from yesterday.

• 100 million activated Android devices
• 200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market
• 4.5 billion applications installed from Android Market
• 400,000 new Android devices activated every day

To put those numbers in perspective, it took Apple three years to sell 100 million iOS devices, compared to 2.5 years for Google and Android. It took Apple 22 months to reach 200,000 apps and 4.5 billion downloads, 30 months for Google to do the same. For whatever reason, the Android Market has been slow to launch internationally, in about half as many countries as Apple, but both companies cover the major markets. More importantly, what’s missing from Android’s bullet list of accomplishments is revenue data.

According to IHS, app revenue for 2010 clearly favors Apple’s App Store by an enormous margin, and apparently there are no shocking numbers from Google to suggest that’s changed much yet. However, even should the Android Market see revenue growth in line with market share, it won’t matter to those using iOS devices. As was reported last month, Apple has paid out $2 billion in revenue to developers, eight months after it paid out the first billion. It’s hard to argue against the iOS platform being self-sustaining at this point, and that’s what should matter to developers and consumers. Unlike during the 90s with the Mac, iOS users won’t have to worry about finding apps and services in the future, no matter how many activations Android reaches per day.

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According to analytics firm comScore , smartphone OS market share continues trending Google’s way in the U.S. Counting some 75 million mobile subscribers for the three-month rolling average ending in March, Android climbed to 34.7 percent, up from 28.7. That six-percentage-point increase is less than Android’s growth in the previous quarter, but still big. Apple saw a little growth, from 25 to 25.5 percent, which was about double that of the previous three-month period. The rise can possibly be attributed to some 2.2 million Verizon iPhones sold during the quarter, though the collapse of RIM is probably having a larger impact.

The BlackBerry maker saw its share decline to 27.1 percent, down 4.5 percent from three months ago. To put that in perspective, a year ago RIM accounted for about 40 percent of smartphone OS market share in the U.S. It’s hard to imagine anything worse than that, except for Microsoft and Palm, both of which have seen their market share halved from a year ago. While HP remains flat at 2.8 percent of the market, Microsoft dipped from 7.7 to 7.5 percent, suggesting Windows Phone 7 has failed to stop the company’s decline.

What this means for Apple is that, simply by not failing like its competitors, and even without a new iPhone in June, Apple will pass RIM in terms of U.S. smartphone OS market share this summer. (It already did so in the global market.) Not surprisingly, the same can be said for handset share, too.

Apple is closing on RIM in the race among handset OEMs, with the iPhone climbing from 6.8 percent to 7.9 percent in the last three months. Currently fourth in the U.S., Apple will pass RIM in the next three months, as the Canadian company saw its own share of handsets decline from 8.5 to 8.4 percent. In third, Motorola dropped nearly a full percentage point, down to 15.8 percent. If current trends continue — and there’s nothing to suggest they won’t — Apple could be the third-largest manufacturer of phones in the U.S. by this time next year.

Going back to Android’s dominance in smartphone operating systems, it should be noted that including tablets like the iPad and handhelds like the iPod touch, the numbers change drastically. According to comScore, as of just last month, the combined installed base of iOS users was some 59 percent greater than that of Android users. That’s important because, to date, Android tablets have failed to significantly impact the tablet market. Currently, there is no competition for the iPod touch, though Samsung is launching the Galaxy Player against Apple’s media player supermajority. Good luck with that.

The takeaway here is that accounting for mobile operating systems across devices, instead of just on smartphones, Google’s chances of achieving the kind of dominance in mobile computing that Microsoft did with traditional computers is much less likely. That means the iOS platform won’t become a niche market the way the Mac did in the late ’90s, and that’s what really matters for Apple’s customers.

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Apple’s shipments grew 114 percent from the previous year, jumping from 8.7 million to 18.7 million handsets, and achieved a new record shipment volume during this past quarter. It now trails world industry leader Nokia by only 5.5 million shipped units. Research In Motion shipped 13.9 million BlackBerry devices during the quarter, while Samsung and HTC had 10.8 and 8.9 million shipments, based largely on the strength of their Android devices.

IDC attributes Apple’s terrific quarter to its triple-digit growth in the U.S. and China, and cites the CDMA-enabled iPhone as key to that growth. The company also signed on South Korean Telecom and Saudi Telecom during the quarter, both of which provided access to large pools of potential new iPhone buyers.

Overall, the entire smartphone market saw 79.7 percent growth year over year according to IDC, and even Nokia and RIM, both of which lost share as measured by percentage, actually saw total shipments rise. Apple was a strong contributor to the overall rise, but HTC and Samsung both made much more impressive advances as measured by percentage increase in shipments. Samsung, thanks to its strong Galaxy line of smartphones, saw a 350-percent increase in handsets shipped between 2010 and 2011, while HTC saw 229 percent growth. Both handset makers embraced Android early and are reaping the benefits over those who came late to the Android party.

Apple’s growth may not match that of Android handset makers in terms of percentage, but considering Apple’s existing reach, that would be hard to do. The growth it’s experiencing is still impressive, considering its 20-percent market share, but it still needs to start thinking about better ways to reach more potential subscribers. Signing on new carriers thanks to CDMA (and possibly world-phone versions) of its devices will help, but if, as Apple itself has suggested, it’s planning low-cost versions of its top-selling iPhone, that’s the surest way to guarantee growth continues to stay positive and even rise.

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Market research firm comScore has released its survey of some 30,000 mobile subscribers from November through February, providing the first real data on the impact of the Verizon iPhone in the U.S. The iPhone’s market share increased 0.2 percent over the three-month period, from 25 percent to 25.2 percent. That relatively small increase (Android jumped seven percent) has generated a large amount of provocative commentary, such as Business Insider declaring, “iPhone dead in water,” but the reality is a little more nuanced.

First, the Verizon iPhone went on sale Feb. 10, meaning less than three weeks of its sales were accounted for during the three-month period surveyed by comScore. Second, going back to the end of January, comScore had iPhone market share at 24.7 percent, down from 25 percent in December. The increase from January to February was actually 0.5 percent. That compares a little more favorably to Android, which saw an increase of 1.8 percent. For Apple, it also suggests a late surge in sales in February, which coincides with the Verizon iPhone launch.

Finally, there are the actual phones to consider. While the number of mobile subscribers in the U.S. using Motorola devices dropped nearly one percent, and RIM dropped 0.2 percent, Apple saw an increase of just under one percent. That’s triple the growth of Samsung, a leading Android OEM. That’s important because Samsung, as well as every other device manufacturer, has access to the entire U.S. market of some 300 million subscriptions. In comparison, Apple reaches about 200 million with AT&T and Verizon, though that will change should AT&T complete its planned acquisition of T-Mobile. That would add another 34 million potential iPhone users, but not until 2012. That’s where the blame, if any, lies in Apple’s current smartphone strategy: the lack of universal, carrier-agnostic access to the iPhone.

However, despite that failure, the iPhone has managed to maintain its market share at around 25 percent in the face of the universal availability of Android. In stark contrast, RIM has fallen from 42 percent to 29 percent, and Microsoft and HP have seen their market share halved in the last year. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say the iPhone is treading water in the U.S., while the Verizon iPhone is finally putting a little breeze in the sails. With the possibility of new hardware/software and wider availability all looming, counting Apple out of the fight is an egregious mistake.

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Now, with genuine competitors entering the market, we’ll find out just how popular the iPad really is, and it doesn’t look like Apple has much to worry about. According to the IDC, the Samsung Galaxy Tab took 17 percent of the market in the last quarter, but there continues to be some debate about what that means. Going back to a conference call in January, Samsung executives stumbled on actual sell-through of the Tab to consumers, versus Tabs shipped to resellers. At the recent iPad event, Steve Jobs repeated the apparent misquote from Samsung suggesting consumer sales were quite “quite small.” The quote was actually, “quite smooth,” and yet Samsung has since been silent on both Tab sales and Jobs’ misquote.

Perhaps that’s why IDC expects Apple to maintain between 70 and 80 percent of the 50 million tablet shipments expected for 2011. However, that anticipated share may even be a little low, as IDC asserts it won’t be until the second half of the year that iPad competitors “hit the market in earnest,” leaving Apple with plenty of time to hook tablet buyers early on.  As current competitors like the Tab and Xoom continue to struggle with mixed reviews, uncompetitive pricing, and now iPad 2, it’s an open question as to whether more competition along those lines will matter. If the iPad maintains market share at around 75 percent, it will mirror the iPod’s success in the media player market. But that’s only part of the story of Apple’s ongoing success.

During the last quarter, 92.1 million PCs were sold. Taking totals for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Apple sold approximately 33 million post-PC devices during the same period. If it seems incongruous to compare Apple post-PC sales with PC sales, rather than other post-PC devices from companies like Samsung or Motorola, that’s exactly the point: No other single company compares to Apple when it comes to being ready for the transition from traditional computers to a range of handheld devices, “where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC,” as Jobs said.

PC sales are expected to be around 350 million in 2011. Apple will sell over 100 million post-PC devices. Apple isn’t just winning tablets; it’s winning computing in general.

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The iPad alone accounted for a grand total of 8 percent of worldwide shipments of mobile PCs in the third quarter of 2010, the period covered by DisplaySearch’s latest report. That category also includes other tablets, and notebook and netbook devices. Mobile PC shipments in general were at an all time high this past quarter, with 55 million devices shipped worldwide, up 19 percent from the same time last year.

The number one worldwide mobile PC producer remained HP for the quarter, who sold 9.5 million devices and took 17.3 percent of the overall market share. Acer came in second with 9.1 million units moved and 16.5 percent of the global share. Apple came in a fairly distant third, with 6.3 million shipped and 12.4 percent of the market. Dell and Toshiba rounded out the top five.

Without the benefit of the iPad, Apple would be in quite a different position. It would drop to number eight overall in worldwide sales, in fact, though MacBook shipments have increased overall both from the previous quarter and when viewed year over year.

The iPad is doing best in developed countries: 95 percent of all shipments of the device were to developed regions, and most of that was to North America. Japan’s iPad adoption is very slow, something DisplaySearch VP Chris Connery suggests is due primarily to language issues:

Questions of local language content and language-specific apps have slowed acceptance in this tech savvy region. As other players come to market with tablet PCs it will be interesting to see if they can move beyond the Western-centric nature of Apple’s product and develop an infrastructure to support local needs, especially with the growth of consumer spending in China on personal computing devices.

If the iPad doesn’t appeal to Asian buyers, Apple may be missing a huge opportunity. According to DisplaySearch’s numbers, the markets with the biggest growth in mobile PC shipments are China and Asia-Pacific. Europe, the Middle East and Africa is also on the rise. Making an effort to introduce more content that appeals to non-English speakers would go a long way toward ensuring the future success of iPad in the worldwide market.

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From Apple 2.0, Needham analyst Charles Wolf has issued a research note on Mac sales that is no less impressive for being a statement of the obvious: Apple is selling a lot of Macs for a lot of money.

For third quarter 2010, Apple sold a record 3.9 million Macs, compared to nearly 90 million PCs. That means Mac market share continues to hover at between four and five percent of worldwide sales, but that may finally be changing. While PC sales were flat in the U.S. and Europe during the third quarter, Apple saw 20 and 25 percent growth, respectively. Possibly more important, Mac sales in Asia, including in the all-important Chinese market, are taking off, up 80 percent year over year.

Worldwide, the Mac was up 28.5 percent year over year, compared to a 9.7 percent increase for PC sales. Mac sales were boosted by sharp increases in home and business sales, up 25.3 and 66.3 percent, respectively. That compares with PC growth rates of 10.4 percent for home sales and only 8.5 percent for business.

Looking at a breakdown of business growth, the Mac saw increases in large and very large businesses of 145 and 200 percent year over year, 90 percent in medium-sized businesses, and nearly 50 percent growth in smaller businesses.

Government sales of Macs were up 500 percent over the same period last year. While it could be argued these impressive-sounding gains are actually a better reflection of poor Mac enterprise presence in the past than of any current success, it could also be attributed to Apple’s primary business focus. If Apple wasn’t selling on the back end, it’s possible that was as much due to a conscious choice to focus on client Macs and iOS devices, as it was to a lack of interest on the part of enterprise customers.

Citing the same report by Charles Wolf, AppleInsider expanded on the continued dominance of the Mac in profits. For the U.S. market, Apple is now the “profit share” leader, accounting for 29.4 percent of every dollar in home computer sales. In comparison, HP accounted for 20.6 percent, while Dell was at 12.9 percent, but there is a caveat. The profit numbers are based upon an average selling price (ASP) from IDC that is higher than that reported by Apple. According to Charles Wolf, “if Apple’s average selling price were substituted for IDC’s, the Mac’s dollar share of the U.S. home market would fall to 20.0 percent, slightly less than HP’s share.” IDC is “standing by” its ASP estimate, but even if the lower estimate is used, it’s important to note that both HP and Dell sold more than twice as many PCs as Apple did Macs for the period.

But unlike HP, Dell, and other PC makers struggling with saturated markets and fighting netbook manufacturers like Asus and Acer, Apple is poised for even greater growth and profit next year. According to Wolf, Mac sales are experiencing “multiple halo effects” from iPods, iPhones, and now iPads. Perhaps 2011 will be the year the Mac breaks 5 percent market share worldwide, but even if not, it will be another record year for Apple computer sales. Back to the Mac indeed.

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Winning the Game It Created

Right now, claiming that Apple is dominating the tablet market is a little like saying Alexander Graham Bell dominated the telephone industry in 1876. By almost all accounts, the iPad forged its own niche, and left competitors scrambling to catch up. But, as with the telephone, that doesn’t mean competitors won’t catch up.

Slaying the Dragon

The situation is similar to (but not the same as) that faced by other device manufacturers when the iPhone was first introduced. Like the iPad, the iPhone was widely embraced by tech enthusiasts and consumers for its ease of use, design and App Store. For a long time after its introduction, the efforts of other handset makers was widely framed as the quest for an “iPhone killer.”

Many of those same companies are now faced with creating an iPad killer, but the climb seems much steeper still since Apple isn’t entering an already dense and competitive market, as it was with the iPhone. But is it really a higher mountain to climb?

The Rest of the Field

The iPad is well-placed to remain the leading tablet device for some time to come; I’m not disputing that. But I do think we’ll see a much more wide open field at this time next year. Whereas with the iPhone, competitors had to worry about both hardware and software gaps between themselves and Cupertino, this time around, device manufacturers have Android. With a growing built-in software distribution platform, and the weight of Google behind it, Android offers something the first companies making prospective iPhone killers didn’t have available to them.

As soon as Android-powered tablets can find the right hardware mix, and refine production practices and parts sourcing to bring prices down, we’ll see a boom in business in their favor. Android accounted for just two percent of global tablet shipments last quarter, but think about what was available. Considering the caliber of Android devices that were on the market, I’d say that’s a success in itself.

Android won’t be the only one elbowing for room in the tablet market, either. BlackBerry is set to release the PlayBook, which will be popular among enterprise customers. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and ViewSonic look poised to grab a piece of the action, too.

The Stage is Set

Apple has done an amazing thing with the iPad. Its sales to date are tremendous, and it led to consumers embracing tablet computing in a big way. But talking about its market share at this early stage isn’t really saying much of anything at all. The interesting discussion isn’t around where the iPad currently places among its competitors, but about where it will be a year from now.

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