Apple Inc (AAPL)

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Q4 PC Sales Miss Gartner Est.; Apple Up 24% In U.S.

By Tiernan Ray

Global personal computer shipments in Q4 rose 3.1%, year over year, in unit terms, to 93.5 million PCs, Gartner reported this afternoon. That was below the 4.8% growth the firm had projected for Q4.

Holiday PC sales were weak, said analyst Mikako Kitagawa. Some of that was due to competition from tablet computers, game machines, and other consumer electronic devices.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) led the pack with 18.8% market share, but its shipments fell 1.2%, year over year. Taiwan’s Acer Group saw shipments fall 1.8%, and claimed 12.7% of the total. Dell (DELL) gained 3.9% in shipments, for an 11.6% share. Lenovo gained a whopping 21.4%, for a 10% share. Toshiba was fifth with 5.7% share, up 1.6%.

And preliminary PC numbers in the U.S. showed Apple (AAPL) jumped from 7.4% of total shipments a year earlier to 9.7% in Q4, a 24% rise, the largest unit shipment increase of any vendor in U.S. data. HP lost 6%, Dell lost 6.1%, Acer lost 30% in the U.S. market, and Toshiba gained 14.4%. At 10.3%, Toshiba is just slightly ahead of Apple in fourth place.