It was buried at the bottom of the Computerworld report on fourth-quarter PC sales at Macworld earlier on Friday, but preliminary signs point to Apple having a pretty good end to 2008.
The report, which focuses on a preliminary estimate of fourth-quarter sales by market-research firm Gartner, paints a grim overall picture of the PC market, with year-over-year revenue tumbling from 2007’s numbers and netbooks cannibalizing sales of other machines.
Not so for Apple, however. The same Gartner report estimates that Apple’s US shipments rose 8.3 per cent over the same period in 2007; that was good enough to give the company an 8 per cent share of the US market (up from 6.7 per cent at the same time last year).
Compare that to Dell, still your market leader in the US., which saw its fourth-quarter shipments fall 16.4 per cent from 2007, according to Gartner. No. 2 PC maker HP saw a 3.4 per cent drop in shipments.
The news isn’t entirely rosy for Apple. As this IDG News Service report notes, Acer enjoyed such a strong fourth quarter -its shipments jumped 55 per cent—that it leapt over Apple into third-place among US PC sellers.
These are, of course, one firm’s estimates. We’ll get a complete picture of Apple’s quarterly performance next Wednesday when the company announces its fiscal first-quarter earnings.
Note: This blog first appeared on our sister site Macworld.com
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