Apple is the biggest, and most profitable at that, personal computer maker in the world as of the second quarter of 2013 and with the likely release this year of the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2, the tech giant is poised to keep the crown, a new report said.

According to market research firm Canalys, which counts the company's two iPad variants as PCs, Apple needs to come out with fresh tablet builds in the second half of 2013 in order to sustain its lead over Android and Windows rivals.

By the end of the June quarter this year, Apple commands a hefty 17.1 per cent share of the global PC market but Canalys noted too that despite shipping out close to 19 million units in the same quarter the company also posted a negative growth of 11.5 per cent.

The slide signals that Apple's grip on the market, established since the iPad has become the dominant device encompassing the conventional and tablet computing worlds, is loosening and partly to blame is the lack of fresh tablet models in the first six months of 2013, Canalys said.

The tablet pricing war is making a dent on Apple's iPad business model and "with tablet vendors attacking Apple on price it must bring fresh innovation to future generations of its iPad range if it is to maintain the lead it has built in the PC market," CNET reported the research firm as saying.

The tech giant should watch out for China's Lenovo, which according to Canalys sprinted to the number two spot on the strength of its more than 14 million unit shipments in Q2 2013, allowing the company to gobble up 12.9 per cent of the overall tablet pie.

"Lenovo is on an upward curve with its tablets, expanding in mainland China and Latin America, where there is little competition," the Canalys report warned according to Apple Insider.

The report, however, is upbeat on Apple's 2H 2013 prospect - that the tech titan will come out with the expected killer devices in the iPad 5 and the iPad Mini 2, giving it the sufficient tools to trounce its competitors, both in the Android and Windows systems.

Yet while the iPad 5 is almost certain of touching down on the first week of September, the Mini 2 is hardly a given. Should latter entirely skip out the 2013, it is left to the 9.7-inch iPad to carry the cudgels for Apple.

According to analysts, the upcoming regular iPad has undergone a major makeover - leaving its body radically slimmed down and lighter from previous builds. The idea for the revamp is for the tablet to gain most if not all of the qualities that allowed the first iPad Mini to romp its way to more than 21 million of totals sales in so short a time, Apple watchers said.

As the for the iPad Mini 2, while some analysts pegged its release date for March or April 2014, Glenn Yeung of Citi Research is convinced that it will be a GO for the compact iOS 7 tablet before 2013 ends.

Yet most analyst cannot ascertain on their projections when the Mini 2 will arrive between October and December this year or whether it will boast of high-resolution Retina to offset the perceived gains of its rivals, foremost of which is Google's second Nexus 7 serving.