Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Mac sales saw double-digit growth in the third quarter of 2009, maintaining Apple's position as the fourth-largest U.S. PC manufacturer, according to new data released Wednesday from IDC."

The overall PC market grew 2.5%, surprisingly with all the recession talk. And as you can see from the chart above, Dell was the company hit hardest in terms of overall growth, losing 13.4% from the same time last year. The big winner was Acer, helped by the netbook market, with 48.3% followed closely by Toshiba with 37.4%. Apple had the 3rd highest growth percentage at 11.8% to go along with their 9.4% market share.

"Apple's share of the US computer market fell to 8 percent during the fourth calendar quarter of 2008 from 9.5 percent in the third as the Mac maker surrendered its third place ranking to surging netbook maker Acer, according to market research firm Gartner."

Acer jumped ahead of Apple per Gartner, from the sounds of it with lots of help from their netbooks, with a whopping 55.4% growth. However, based on this data, Apple is still one of only three of the top PC vendors that had positive growth in the 4th quarter of 2008, Dell and HP both declined.