It Was Flat Sales That Helped Microsoft Become America's #5 PC Maker

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:

Microsoft was the fifth-biggest PC maker in the U.S. in the third quarter of this year, according to industry advisory firm Gartner. The top spot in the U.S. belongs to HP, with about 4.5 million machines sold, ahead of Dell at 3.8 million, Lenovo at 2.3 million, and Apple at 2 million. The gap between fourth and fifth is pretty big -- Microsoft sold only 0.6 million Surface devices last quarter -- but it suggests that Microsoft's PC division is heading in the right direction, with sales 1.9 percent higher than the same quarter last year. The company pushed down to sixth place was Acer. The current quarter should be better still; the Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and Surface Studio have all been given hardware refreshes which, when combined with the always-busy holiday season, should stimulate higher sales. Globally, both Gartner and IDC reported a flat PC market (up 0.1 percent in Gartner's view, down 0.9 percent in IDC's), after the previous quarter's modest growth.

'The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades,' said one Gartner analyst.

In defining what constitutes a PC, Gartner includes notebooks and 'premium' ultramobile devices -- but does not include iPads or Chromebooks.

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