Apple Leads Surge in Smartphone Growth

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (Trefis) -- Apple(AAPL) has proclaimed for a long time that we are now in a post-PC era, in which people would no longer need the traditional PCs and instead engage themselves with the digital world through iPhones and iPads.

This theory is gaining some traction as indicated by a recent report from Canalys that says that smartphone shipments have overtaken the PCs for the first time last year with Apple leading that growth.

Incidentally, a few days back Canalys came up with another report in which it mentioned that Apple has now become the largest global PC player and surpassed HP(HPQ) to take the top spot. Lenovo was the only other player to have gained market share in this market while Dell(DELL) and Acer lost considerable market share.

The notable point to note here is that the PC market, as termed by Canalys, not only includes the traditional desktops and laptops, but also the tablet PCs. This goes to show that Apple is leading the growth of both the smartphone and PC market.

Our $550 price estimate for Apple stock is about 20% above the market price.

See our complete analysis of Apple here

According to a recent report from research firm IDC, worldwide smartphone market grew 54.7% year over year in Q4 2011, with iPhone 4S instrumental in this growth. Apple became the No. 1 smartphone player in the fourth quarter of 2011 with a market share of 23.5%, overtaking Samsung at 22.8%.

Tablets helped the PC market reach 120 million units in the fourth quarter, a growth of 16% year over year. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads in the quarter, which helped it increase its share to 17% of the total PC market. Excluding the tablets from the equation, the PC market actually experienced a decline of 0.4%.

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