Wow, here’s a table you don’t expect to see. It shows Apple as the clear leader in global PC shipments, by a clear margin. As 9to5Mac reports, the latest Q2 2012 data from Canalys shows Apple with a little over 21 million shipments for a 19% share of the world market, ahead of HP who have around  13.5 million shipments for a 12.5% share.

This data includes what Canalys calls ‘pads’ so the iPad is by far and away the biggest portion of the Apple numbers. If Canalys’ Q2 matches up to Apple’s financial Q3 reported just recently, we know that 17 million iPads and 4 million Macs were sold – which matches up nicely with the numbers above. Counting iPads as PCs doesn’t seem outrageous either, particularly with Microsoft calling their upcoming Surface a PC and a tablet.

It’s incredible to think that two and a half years ago the first iPad hadn’t even hit the streets yet – and now its sales outstrip all PCs sold total by any PC manufacturer last quarter.