Gartner: PC Shipments Up 2.3 Percent, Apple No. 3 Vendor in U.S.

Market research firm Gartner put together some preliminary figures on the state of the PC industry with mixed results. On one hand, worldwide PC shipments jumped past 85.2 million units in the second quarter of 2011, a 2.3 percent increase from the same period a year prior. However, the growth is somewhat marred by failing to meet Gartner's earlier projection of 6.7 percent growth.

"After strong growth in shipments of consumer PCs for four years, driven by strong demand for mini-notebooks and low-priced consumer notebooks, the market is shifting to modest, but steady growth," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “The slow overall growth indicates that the PC market is still in a period of adjustment, which began in the second half of 2010."


Hewlett Packard topped the charts, both in terms of worldwide PC shipments (17.5 percent share of the market) and those solely in the U.S. (26.9 percent share). In terms of the latter, Apple jumped ahead of Acer to become the third largest PC vendor in the country with a 10.7 percent share. Acer, meanwhile, fell from 11.3 percent to 9.3 percent. What's also noteworthy about Apple's rise is that these figures don't take into account tablet PCs -- a segment Apple dominates -- and only include desktops and notebooks (including mini-notebooks).