Is the iPad a PC?

Jim Mone/Associated Press

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive officer, has said, in no uncertain terms, that it is. The late Steven P. Jobs said no, the iPad is part of the “post-PC era.”

What’s funny is that if you take Mr. Ballmer’s position and lump the iPad in with traditional computers, Apple looks stronger in the PC market than it has in decades. A new report from the British research firm Canalys predicts Apple will become the No. 1 PC maker in the world in the second half of next year, when iPad sales are included as part of the equation, bumping Hewlett Packard from the top spot.

The prediction from Canalys is based on an assumption that Apple will release an iPad 3 sometime next year that will increase sales. The firm’s report also said current iPad sales would “come under pressure” during the holiday season as a result of two aggressively priced tablets, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Canalys is one of the few research firms that has chosen to include what it calls the pad market when it compiles market share statistics for the PC industry. That decision makes the PC industry, as a whole, look a lot healthier because of the speedy growth of tablets. For the full year, Canalys estimates global PC shipments will jump 15 percent to 415 million, predominantly because of increasing tablet sales.

Without tablets, PC growth will be anemic, with Gartner and IDC predicting growth in the low single-digit percentage points. Nice of Apple to give the industry a lift, even if Mr. Jobs didn’t think the iPad was a PC.