Apple grows US market share, but shipments down for quarter
updated 05:44 pm EDT, Wed October 10, 2012
Apple moves 2.1 million units, down from Q3 2011
Apple continues to gain market share in the United States, but the company saw shipments of its PCs decline in the third quarter due to a slowdown in overall consumption. This according to Gartner, which published its analysis of the global and US PC markets for the third quarter of 2012. Gartner's report found declines among most of the major US PC suppliers, with only Lenovo shipping more units this quarter than it did in the same quarter last year.
Apple saw the smallest drop in shipments among any of the top six manufacturers. The 2.1 million PCs shipped figure for this past quarter represents a drop of 6.1 percent from 2.2 million for the same quarter in 2011. Still, Apple increased its share of the US market to 13.6 percent, making it the third largest computer company in the nation.
HP and Dell took the top two spots for the US market, with 27 and 21.4 percent of all US shipments. The two PC giants, though saw 19.3 and 15.9 percent drops in shipments for the third quarter, respectively. Toshiba and Acer saw the largest drops in shipments, losing 33.4 and 28.2 percent, respectively.
Lenovo shipped 1.36 million units in the US last quarter, making it the only company to ship more units in the US than it did for the same quarter last year. Lenovo's shipments were up 6.1 percent over Q3 2011.
For the worldwide market, the PC continued to contract. Gartner put the decline in global PC shipments at 8.3 percent.
