As HP Looks To Kill Off PC Business, Apple Becomes World’s Biggest Mobile PC Maker

By John Brownlee (3:54 pm, Aug. 18, 2011)

Wondering why HP is nuking its PC business from orbit, despite being the biggest PC maker in the world? Wonder no longer.

First of all, earlier today, the research firm DisplaySearch announced that Apple had surprassed HP as the world’s largest mobile PC vendor.

The numbers are a bit contentious, because they include the iPad, but we think that’s valid: the iPad is taking over for mobile PCs like netbooks. Meanwhile, the whole mobile PC industry is experiencing negative growth, all the while tablets are up 400% in year-over-year growth.

Okay, but HP’s still number two in the mobile PC space, right? And they still dominate the overall PC market, right?

True, but despite massive sales, HO’s margins are a mere 5.7%. Apple makes more on selling one Mac than HP does in seven PCs.

Exiting the PC business isn’t madness on HP’s part. It is smart thinking.

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John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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