Apple's PC sales slip in fourth quarter of 2008; Acer gains

Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), while still having outpaced all PC makers in growth during the dismal last quarter of 2008, realized that it's not above every other competitor on the PC planet. Consumers seem to have been gaga over Apple's laptops in the last few quarters, but even that fervor is being tempered by trying economic times.

The Q4 period of 2008 saw Apple sell 1.25 million PCs, a 23% drop from the prior quarter (but an 8% increase year-over-year). At the same time, the design-conscious consumer electronics company saw its share of the U.S. PC market slip to 8% in the Q4 period from Q3's 9.5%. This was to be expected due to Apple's bump in each year's Q3 back-to-school buying period.

Taiwan's Acer, however, bumped Apple from third place to fourth in the U.S. PC market, taking 15.2% of all sales, indicating a 55% lift over the year-ago period. The Gateway and the Acer brands both are contributing to those sales, along with bargain-basement pricing that's apparently more important to Acer.

That is, market share over revenue share and Acer's huge hand in the red-hot netbook category. Apple will hold on better than the competition in 2009, but folks dropping hundreds of dollars for iPods, iPhones and thousands for MacBooks may slow down faster than the industry believes.