Gartner report shows PCs have peaked and may begin the long road to obscurity

We are starting to see the “Cars and Trucks” model unfold as PC sales are starting to slip dramatically.

Among the top 5 vendors in the U.S. PC market, all but Apple experienced a decline in shipments according to a Gartner report late this evening. This is not your average “Apple beat the PC industry every quarter for the past 5 years.” It is a dramatic fall. Apple pulled to within 500,000 units of Dell from double that a year ago.

A few notables: 

• Apple was sitting on a lot of ‘old’ Mac hardware in Q2. Its monster refresh of its notebook (and sort of Pro) line isn’t counted here.
• As Gartner notes specifically, iPads aren’t counted which would have shot Apple way past Dell and HP.
• iPads, at $400-$800 are as expensive as the typical PC
• Separating ‘media tablets’ out is going to be a lot tougher when Microsoft releases its Intel powered Windows 8 Surface device
• The Mac still isn’t a big player in the global PC market where it still hasn’t cracked the top 5 (below) where it seems Asusteck and others continue to do well.