November 5, 2012
Via Kevin C. Tofel of GigaOm, new numbers from research firm IDC find that over 27 million tablets were sold in the third quarter of this year alone. But as Tofel goes on to note, there’s a larger story:
Tablet sales have already approached nearly 25 percent of PC sales. As computer sales are in decline, sales of tablets rose 49.5 percent from the same quarter in the prior year. That’s more bad news for traditional computer makers.
Close to one quarter of all computer sales are now tablets — not bad for a market that barely existed just two years ago. And speaking of tablets, Apple has released sales numbers on the latest versions of their popular iPad — including the new iPad mini — and as you’d expect, those numbers are pretty big. From a company press release:
Apple® today announced it has sold three million iPads in just three days since the launch of its new iPad® mini and fourth generation iPad—double the previous first weekend milestone of 1.5 million Wi-Fi only models sold for the third generation iPad in March.
Three million in three days. Wow.