Why Apple Just Pulled Off The Company’s First True Post-PC Quarter

We should no longer be confused about the notion of the “post-PC era:” Apple’s shocking iOS device sales numbers for its first fiscal quarter are just further proof that tablets and smartphones are the personal-computing products taking over our hearts and wallets.

The iPhone and the iPad were already the class of their respective market segments, but Apple managed to pull off something amazing during the last quarter of 2011, more than doubling shipments of both products en route to a spectacular quarter. Apple sold 37 million iPhones and 15 million iPads, accounting for 72 percent of its $46 billion in revenue. But Apple CEO Tim Cook made an interesting comparison during the conference call following Apple’s earnings release, pointing out that according to IDC more tablets were sold in the U.S. during the fourth quarter than desktop PCs. Now, desktop PC sales have been on a downward trend for a very long time, even prior to the release of the iPhone, so it’s not completely shocking that tablets would have closed the gap this quickly.