This week Gartner released the figures for U.S. and worldwide PC ships for the fourth calendar quarter of 2008. The report places Apple in fourth place in the U.S. market with a share of 8%, up 6.7% from the same quarter in 2007. The figures show a 1.5% decrease since the third quarter of 2008 in which Apple grew 9.5% year-on-year.
In terms of shipments Apple's usually grow somewhere in the region of 30-40% year-over-year but in the the fourth quarter of 2008 shipments only grew 8.3% a decrease from the same time in 2007.
Apple's growth continued to be ahead of the industry in the fourth quarter of 2008 but Apple was outpaced by Acer who saw a massive 55.4% year-over-year increase, these figures place Apple in fourth place in terms of U.S. market share.
Worldwide Apple was unable to enter the top five for market share with Toshiba holding fifth place with fourth quarter 2008 and calendar year 2008 growth of 4.5%.