As another quarter of the year ended, analysts already started comparing market shares and revenues to determine what company proved more successful while an economic crisis runs in the background. On the mobile PC market area, we're already accustomed to seeing HP holding on to the first position and Dell following close behind, just as it has been since 2006. Nothing changed here this time either, only that Dell seems to get closer to the first position.

CEO Mark Hurd brought Hewlett-Packard at new levels of success and he will be remembered since he took the leadership at a moment when the company was on the brink of disaster. Even so, Dell seems to have rejoined the battle and is also determined to regain the position it lost back in the third quarter of 2006; at least, that is what iSuppli believes. And the numbers seem to sustain his sayings, as Dell proved to be a little faster than HP, at least from April to June this year, according to iSuppli.

During the second quarter of the year, Dell's unit shipments went up over 11.2 million units, a 21 percent gain compared to the same period of last year. On the other hand, HP was still leading with about 13.4 million units shipped worldwide and 19.6 percent annually growth rate. Quarterly, HP went down 3.7 percent, while Dell managed to rise 1 percent. The growth meant a gain of 0.7 percent of the global shipments over quarter for Dell, as well as a 0.9 percent annually gain. HP gained only 0.3 percent quarter to quarter.

The quarter registered a total shipments growth of about 14 percent, which was two percent more than the original prediction showed. Even so, while HP and Dell, as well as other top PC makers registered gains, the smaller vendors lost a percent or more quarterly, while dropping 2.2 percent over year. From the iSuppli's top five list of producers, only Acer registered a market share drop, as its shipments went down to 6.65 million units worldwide, a 0.1 percent drop to 9.5 percent of the total shipments.

The top five also lists Lenovo and Toshiba on the fourth and fifth positions, respectively. Lenovo registered a very slow growth, shipping 5.57 million units, meaning a 14.4 percent annual gain, while Toshiba's unit shipments reached 3.18 million, a 23.9 gain.

The financial crisis will probably affect the PC shipments for the end of the third quarter, and the numbers will probably be tallied and assessed sometime in November.