Gartner: U.S. PC Shipment Grows 13 Percent In 4Q

U.S. Outpacing Rest Of The World

Gartner released a study last week that said the U.S. PC market increased 13.1 percent in the fourth quarter, while several individual vendors saw marked increases in their shipment levels from the previous year. The worldwide PC market grew by 1 percent.

The study defined PCs as desk-based PCs, notebooks, premium ultramobiles and Windows-based tablets, excluding Chromebooks and other non-Windows-based tablets. A coinciding study of fourth-quarter PC shipment levels also released Monday by market research firm IDC excluded tablets, but included Chromebooks.

Following are five PC vendors in the U.S. market with the best performances in the fourth quarter.

5. Asus

Asus ranked fifth in the U.S. PC market, taking 6.8 percent of the market share with 1.2 million shipments in the fourth quarter. This is a 7.4 percent increase for the Taiwan-based company, which last year collected 1.1 million PC shipments but retained 7.2 percent of market share.

Worldwide, Asus also ranked fifth, taking 7.5 percent of the worldwide market share and totaling 6.2 million PC shipments.

4. Lenovo

Lenovo totaled 1.85 million shipments in the fourth quarter, gaining a 10.2 percent share of the total U.S. PC market. The Beijing-based company grew 21.6 percent from last year's fourth quarter, where it totaled 1.5 million shipments and 9.5 percent market share.

Despite its ranking in the U.S. market, Lenovo was the top company worldwide for its PC shipment levels in the fourth quarter, selling 16.2 million units worldwide and taking in 19 percent of the market share.

According to Gartner analysts, Lenovo showed strong growth in the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Africa, but shipments declined in Latin America and Japan.

3. Apple

Apple totaled 2.1 million PC shipments and took 11.7 percent of the market share in the fourth quarter, which showed considerable growth over last year.

The company's PC market grew 11.5 percent over the previous year's fourth-quarter levels, where it brought in 1.9 million shipments.

Worldwide, the company's shipment levels were not as prevalent, as Apple did not rank before the top five vendors across the world: Asus, Acer Group, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo.

2. Dell

Dell ranked the second-best U.S. PC vendor in the fourth quarter, bringing in 4 million shipments and 22.6 percent of the market share. The company grew 13.5 percent from last year's fourth quarter, where it took 22.5 percent market share but garnered 3.6 million shipments.

Worldwide, Dell accounted for 12.7 percent of the PC market behind HP and Lenovo, indicating that its expansion into the consumer market has been successful, according to Gartner analysts.

1. Hewlett-Packard

HP took 29.2 percent share for the U.S. PC market, selling 5.2 million tablets in the fourth quarter. This marks a 26 percent increase over last year's fourth-quarter results, when the company collected 4.1 million shipments.

Of the five U.S. PC vendors, HP experienced the highest levels of growth.

"HP really came up great," said Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa. "The company is now really committed as a PC market."

The high levels of growth come on the heels of HP's announcement in October of splitting its company into a PC-printer company, selling computers, and an enterprise computing company, focused on software and storage services.