Apple continues to dominate mobile PC, tablet markets

Apple's iPad helped catapult the company to the top of the mobile PC space last quarter, according to new data from NPD DisplaySearch.

The research firm revealed today that during the first quarter, Apple shipped 17.2 million mobile PCs worldwide, earning it 22.5 percent share of the market and jumping 118 percent year-over-year. Hewlett-Packard and Acer trailed with 11.6 percent and 9 percent market share, respectively. Lenovo and Dell rounded out the top five with 7.7 percent and 7.3 percent share.

NPD DisplaySearch, which defines mobile PCs as tablets, notebooks, and mini-notebooks, said total shipments for the quarter hit 76.2 million, representing a 30 percent gain over the same period last year.

Apple's dominance extended to the tablet market, where the company shipped 13.6 million iPads during the first quarter, according to NPD DisplaySearch. With that many tablets shipped, the company easily dwarfed all competitors in market share, taking 62.8 percent of the space. Samsung and Amazon trailed far behind with 7.5 percent and 4 percent market share, respectively.

Although Apple's success was due mainly to its iPad's popularity, NPD revealed in its study that the company's competitors weren't necessarily so concerned about market share. In fact, HP was "one of the few top players in the market to increase its unit shipments year-over-year," NPD said. Instead of increasing shipments, NPD said, mobile PC vendors focused their efforts on "margins and profits."

Still, the companies were able to slowly chip away at Apple's lead. During the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple owned 26.6 percent of the global mobile PC market. HP, which was in second place, had only 9.9 percent share.