Mac Market Share Surges to 5% in UK

A new study from market research firm Gartner pegs Apple's share of the personal computer market in the UK at 5.0% for the third quarter of 2009, ranking the company fifth among all vendors. The company's unit shipments increased 26.6% to move up considerably from a market share of 3.8% in the year-ago quarter.

Gartner's UK PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q09 (Thousands of Units)

Most of the vendors are facing a difficult time. "Interestingly, two vendors at either end of the price spectrum are winning the battle. At one end, Acer continued to provide price-conscious products through multiple channels to attract a wider buying audience. At the other end, Apple leveraged the "halo" effect of the Apple brand created by the iPods and iPhones into the PC arena, dominating the mid to higher price brackets."

The report notes that Apple only barely claimed the fifth position in the rankings, as Samsung generated outstanding growth of over 200% year-over-year to leap to 4.8% market share.

Gartner's data also covered individual statistics for France and Germany, as well as broader numbers for all of Western Europe, but Apple was unable to break into the top five vendors in any of those surveys.

Apple has traditionally performed much better in its home market of the United States than it has in international markets, with the company claiming 8.8% of the US market during the same quarter. The new UK results, however, demonstrate even stronger growth there than in the US over the past year, suggesting that Apple's continued success has spilled over to its international markets significantly enough to begin ranking with the market leaders there.