Except for maybe those crazies at the front of the iPad 2 line, many of us have become pretty measured about our big gadget purchases in this post-recession era — carefully assessing our needs and weighing different categories against each other as much as we weigh the different devices within those categories.

Which means that the PC, the iPad, the game console, the Kindle and everything else are competing against each other more than ever for a piece of our paychecks.

So how are they stacking up? A report this past week from the IDC research firm (via Engadget) filled in an important piece of the puzzle, reporting that the Kindle accounted for 48 percent of the industry’s 6 million worldwide e-reader shipments in Q410. Mixing that factoid with a little math and some additional research, we come up with the following worldwide scorecard for the three-month 2010 holiday season.

  • Windows Phone: 2 million units* [Source]
  • PlayStation 2: 2.1 million units [Source]
  • Kindle:~2.9 million units [Source]
  • PlayStation Portable: 3.6 million units [Source]
  • Apple Mac: 4.13 million units [Source]
  • Toshiba PCs: 5.37 million units [Source]
  • PlayStation 3: 6.3 million units [Source]
  • Xbox 360: 6.3 million units [Source]
  • iPad: ~7.4 million units [Source]
  • Xbox 360 Kinect: 8 million units* [Source]
  • Nintendo Wii: 8.75 million units [Source]
  • Nintendo DS: 9.01 million units [Source]
  • Lenovo PCs: 9.6 million units [Source]
  • Acer PCs: 9.8 million units [Source]
  • Dell PCs: 11.1 million units [Source]
  • iPhones: 16.24 million [Source]
  • HP PCs: 17.9 million units [Source]
  • iPods: 19.45 million units [Source]
  • Symbian phones: 31 million units [Source]
  • Android phones: 32.9 million [Source]

* Released mid-quarter

That’s a partial list, and as an academic exercise, it’s flawed by big differences in prices, reporting practices (shipments vs. sales; self-reported vs. analysts’ estimates) and sales channels. That said, it’s mildly informative and pretty fun to put it all in context.

As in, yes, even the PS2 outsold Windows Phone.

What else should we add to the list?

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