The analysis firm typically does not publish information about companies below the fifth-place mark and so omits information about Gateway itself and other major computer makers such as Apple.

Much of Dell's apparent failure is a combination of slowness in getting its channel ramped up to accommodate new models and HP's relative adeptness at identifying the market, iSuppli says. The latter has devoted most of its attention to notebooks in recent months and often has a larger variety of stores that sell its systems. Dell only recently began selling its systems in a handful of retail chains and continues to focus heavily on desktops such as the iMac-like XPS ONE.