By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Last week, DisplaySearch joined Canalys classifying iPad as a personal computer. Canalys claims that iPad lifts Apple to third place in global PC market share. DisplaySearch puts Apple No. 1 in the United States by similar reckoning. The Apple fan club of bloggers and journalists delighted in the DisplaySearch data, gifting Apple with "its No.1 headlines." I write to correct the record about Macs outselling Windows PCs. They don't, and you can put your wishful thinking back in the draw or closet from whence it came. Apple's tablet is not a PC.

In August 2010, I asked: "Is Apple the real US PC market share leader -- or soon will be?" That could only be if iPad classified as a PC. I write posts like that one to get people thinking, to look at something from a different perspective. Also, based on iPad's functionality and available applications, it was legitimate consideration -- Apple's market share would be so much greater if iPad was a PC.

Neither Gartner nor IDC count iPad as a PC, and IDC's classification is all wrong -- or so I say. The analyst firm classifies as "media tablets" slate devices ranging in size from 5 inches to as much as 14 inches and running so-called lightweight operating systems, such as Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS, on ARM processors. However, IDC classifies tablets running Windows on x86 processors as PCs. It's a simply shortsighted categorization that ignores how the devices are used.

Based on usage, iPad is not a PC. That's my analysis, which I haven't explicitly stated until today. (Tip: My posts often don't reflect my personal opinion unless I explicitly say so; many readers wrongly have assumed I see iPad as a PC. I raised the question for others to answer. Today I offer my own answer for the first time.)

As long as iPad requires a PC for activation and to receive operating system updates, it is a dependent device. Apple's tablet requires a PC to fully function.