Jul 14, 2011 16:31 GMT  ·  By

Technology research firm Gartner has issued the preliminary results that paint a picture of the current state of the PC market ranking Apple 3rd behind pack-leaders Hewlett Packard (HP) and Dell.

The note issued by Gartner this week reveals that worldwide PC shipments have surpassed 85.2 million units in the second quarter of 2011.

That may sound quite impressive to those who don’t follow the trends in the industry up close, but Gartner is careful to outline that these figures are much lower than their earlier projections.

It’s a meagre 2.3 percent increase from the same period last year, says the firm. They had banked on a 6.7 percent growth in their books.

"After strong growth in shipments of consumer PCs for four years, driven by strong demand for mini-notebooks and low-priced consumer notebooks, the market is shifting to modest, but steady growth, " said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.

“The slow overall growth indicates that the PC market is still in a period of adjustment, which began in the second half of 2010," added Kitagawa.

So why were they so wrong? Well, it’s mostly because of the iPad and its rivals. Tablets are slowly but surely eating away at the PC industry, whether it's mobile, or not.

"Given the hype around media tablets such as the iPad, retailers were very conservative in placing orders for PCs,” Ms. Kitagawa said.

“Instead, they wanted to secure space for media tablets. Some PC vendors had to lower their inventory through promotions, while others slimmed their product lines at retailers."

Even though HP and Dell are the undisputed leaders in the PC segment (which includes desktop PCs, notebooks, and netbooks), Apple is said to have showed the strongest growth among the top-tier vendors in the U.S. in 2010.

Cupertino climbed from fifth place to third, overtaking Acer and Toshiba.

Gartner cautions that these are just preliminary results. However, the difference between the fourth and the third position is large enough to cement Apple’s #3 spot, even if the percentage needs a bit of adjusting on each end.

These preliminary findings also showed that Apple's performance exceeded the industry average by quite a margin.

Gartner cites the recent iMac refresh as a key factor in this development, though we’re pretty sure the MacBook Pro family (which saw a notable refresh ahead of the iMac) has a say in this as well.

According to the IT advisory company, Macs do well to attract both consumers and buyers in the education sector.

Gartner promises to have final statistics for the PC Quarterly Statistics Worldwide by Region program relatively soon.