According to this report from Canalys, Apple is the number one vendor of personal computers in the world. It reaches that conclusion by including tablets as personal computers, which they most certainly are. PCs are PCs based on what they do, not on what they look like.

Canalys today announced that Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4. Overall, the total client PC market, including desktops, netbooks, notebooks, and pads grew 16% year-on-year. Excluding pads, the client PC market declined 0.4%. The floods in Thailand, that impacted hard drive assembly plants, caused mild disruption to shipments during the quarter, but the side effects are likely to be felt in the first half of 2012.

Among the other top five PC vendors, only Lenovo managed to increase its market share, by a relatively modest two points, compared to Apple’s six-point gain over the same quarter a year ago. Acer, Dell and HP – the hardest hit – all lost market share.  Now the second largest client PC vendor worldwide, HP will struggle to compete with Apple following the end of its Touchpad.

Welcome to the post-PC era.

Disclosure: I am long AAPL.

Related articles

• Apple iPad breaks HP’s hold on top PC spot (news.cnet.com)
• The iPad created a 16% gain for PCs in Q4 and made Apple world’s #1 vendor (thenextweb.com)
• iPad propels Apple to top of PC market as growth stalls without tablets (gigaom.com)