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.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has been on a run lately -- it's selling Mac computers an an ever-increasing pace, the iPhone is successfully being transitioned as the successor to the iPod universe (even with those two-year contracts!. The company can't seem to do any wrong. It literally is selling all it can, even in a recession. How can Apple do this? Its prices are not cheap and the company shies away from discounts. Well, Apple also has a marketing gold touch that's unmatched anywhere in any industry, and that's the competitive advantage.

But the gold path can last forever, right? Will the tightness of consumers' wallets and purses ever put a damper on Apple's business? That's the thinking for 2009 -- the economy will catch up to Apple's sales and the company will experience at least a little bit of the slowdown that is catching retailers like a noose around the neck. Mac sales even declined in November by 1% over the same period in 2007 at the same time overall PC sales increased 2%. The problem was desktop Mac sales, which bombed 35%. Apple's laptop sales were still on fire, though.

Will Apple see a more pronounced slowdown after the holiday sales season is over? That's anyone's guess, but it seems logical. Until the economic rut is lifted, it's hard to imagine that financially fickle consumers will be shelling out $1,000+ for a new Apple laptop PC at the drop of a hat during the first half of 2009. Plenty will, but also plenty won't. Those that won't will opt for cheaper PCs, which sell for half the cost of an Apple laptop in may cases -- and price sensitivity will be the order of the day for 2009 consumerism. Apple best be prepared for reality.

When it comes to predicting various product sales from hipper-than-hip Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), it's good to know that we have more than financial analyst statistics and feelings to look at. One stock watcher recently hung out quite a bit at several Apple retail stores to try and collect empirical data from his own two eyes to see if Apple's analyst-predicted iPhone and Mac product sales numbers are indeed stacking up or are falling short.

The conclusion? Apple will most likely achieve its goal of 730,000 iPhone sales in the quarter ended September 30. In fact, the conclusion this analyst came up with from his store checks indicate Apple could bypass its own estimate and sell over 800,000 iPhones in the July-September quarter.

As far as Apple Mac sales go, Gene Munster's research stated that about 2 million Mac systems would be sold in September alone, pushing past his earlier estimate of 1.9 million. It's interesting to note that the average Apple retail store sells over 55 Mac systems per open day, not counting website sales or other retail sales, like those inside Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) locations. Are Apple shares headed above $200 territory? Munster maintains his $211 target.

According to Reuters and many other news sources, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) failed to sell the number of iPhones everyone was expecting. Analysts predicted some 200,000 sales, whereas the number in the air seems to be 146,000. As a result, this morning Apple stock tumbled down almost 5%, though it began to recover some of that loss as the day moved on.

Concerns about the iPhone vulnerability and security are also bring out some caution in investors, though the security bug has yet to be seen in the wild or affecting users.

Apple will be likely releasing more information tomorrow at their earnings call, which might shed some more light on the situation. Considering that Apple only had a couple days at the end of the quarter to sell the iPhones, it's hardly a definitive statement on the success of the iPhone. Not with surveys out reporting that 70% of Zune users are planning to switch to the iPhone.

If investors think the iPhone has legs, and consider that Apple usually has a very good quarter as it makes education sales (and we also have the new operating system that will be released, bringing a further cash infusion and hype factor around Apple in), then this might be considered a nice time to buy on the dip.

[Disclosure: I own Apple shares]