Apple grabs 10% of US market

Apple has regained a 10% share in the US computer market, two decades after it last enjoyed such success.

While Apple’s share globally and in Europe remains small, the statistics from analysts Gartner and IDC show the Mac’s recent success in the US has pushed it to a 10.7% share.

Gartner said Apple’s sales “far exceed the industry average, partly driven by an iMac refreshment that attracted both consumers and buyers in the education sector”. Apple still trails HP and Dell, which each have almost a quarter of sales in the US.

This quarter also marked a success for Dell, which moved into the worldwide second-place ranking for the first time in almost three years, largely off the back of business sales and companies moving to Windows 7 from XP.

Dell now holds a 12.5% share of the global market, over Lenovo’s 12% but still trailing HP’s 17.5%, according to the Gartner statistics.

Not all good news

Acer fell from second place to fourth with a 10.9% share, which Gartner attributed to a failure of its “low-price, high volume” model, and IDC said could be attributed to “uncertainties from its recent management shake-up”.

While Dell and Apple will be celebrating, both analyst firms put the global PC market’s growth at just over 2%. “These preliminary results continue to reflect pressure from competing consumer and business products, as well as cautious spending,” said IDC analyst Jay Chou. “Nevertheless, product refreshes and promotions in the second half fo fhte year as well as easier year-ago data should boost growth in the second half of the year.”

The EMEA market continued to struggle, with its second quarter in a row where growth declined. IDC blamed competition from tablets and smartphones, while Gartner said the “market in the region remained weak due to slow consumer demand”.