MacRumors.com

Gartner has released preliminary market share numbers for 3Q 2006 (calendar, Apple's financial 4Q) which show Apple seeing substantial industry growth at 1.5%. Apple now ships 6.1% of all U.S. "PCs", 4th in the industry behind Gateway (6.4%), HP (23%), and Dell (32.1%). Apple did not place in the top-5 in worldwide PC shipments, so that data was not available.

Gartner notes that the overall U.S. PC market actually experienced a 2% decline year-over-year, so that coupled with Apple's announcment of a 30% growth in Mac shipments last quarter helps explain the dramatic growth.

"Two factors that contributed to the poor performance in the U.S. market were continued weakness in the professional desk-based market, and the carry-over effect from strong sales in the second quarter. Strong sales to the home market, fueled by solid back to school sales and mobile PCs could not offset the decline in other areas." -- Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s Client Computing Markets Group.

Apple indicated yesterday that while reaction to the Mac Pro has been positive, the professional community may be holding off until an Intel-native Creative Suite ships (expected spring 2007). On the flip side, a recent article in a Princeton University newspaper indicates that Apple is indeed doing very well in the growing education market.

Recent research has indicated that Apple is poised to grab even more "switchers" this holiday season, which promises to translate into even more market share.

Of interest, Dell has consistently been losing market share to rival HP in both U.S. and Worldwide markets, and HP took the #1 spot on the Worldwide market with 16.3% compared to Dell's 16.1%.