Gartner sees Apple tied with Acer at 10.4pc share

Gartner tonight followed up on IDC results by supporting views that Apple has closed on Acer in the US computer market. Apple in its view jumped to 10.4 percent share with 1.83 million Macs; the figure put it less than 17,000 computers away from Acer, whose share plummeted to 10.5 percent. The analyst group wasn't as optimistic about Apple's performance as it only would have shipped 13.7 percent more computers, although this was well over the 2.2 percent average.

HP and Dell also fell below the average as they each lost share, hitting 25.3 percent and 23.8 percent. Toshiba's share was larger in this view as it moved up to 9.3 percent.

Like its rival, Gartner partly blamed the US sluggishness and Apple's surge on the iPad effect. Back-to-school sales were weak, but this was because non-student buyers who would have exploited student promos were buying iPads instead or simply skipping a sale entirely to save money, analyst Mikako Kitagawa said. iPads weren't counted in the figures, but Macs also had a lift due to the August updates to the iMac and Mac Pro.

Apple again didn't enter the top five worldwide, but a similar decline of the top three repeated itself as in the IDC study. HP fell to 17.5 percent, while Acer and Dell dropped to 13.1 percent and 12.2 percent each. ASUS trailed the pack at 5.4 percent but had enough to just slightly oust Toshiba and force it down to sixth place.

Most of the hottest growth happened in China, Japan and the rest of southeast Asia. Slowdowns in Europe and the US were driven again by the iPad effect but also by the end to two years of growth in netbooks that may have been spurred on by Apple's slate.

By Electronista Staff