Apple continues to excel in a softened PC market that is shifting toward cloud computing and media tablets, according to the latest PC market share analysis from Gartner and IDC.

Apple nabbed nearly 11 percent market share in the US during the second quarter of 2011, even as overall shipments were down year over year. Worldwide, shipments were up slightly but well below the expected growth. Acer continues its recent downward spiral as netbook demand has dropped, mainly to the benefit of Dell and Lenovo.

The US PC market was down significantly during the second quarter compared to the previous year. "Given the hype around media tablets such as the iPad, retailers were very conservative in placing orders for PCs," Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement. "Instead, they wanted to secure space for media tablets." IDC also noted that netbook sales, a previous driver of consumer PC sales in 2009 and early 2010, have continued their rapid decline.

Sales were up sequentially from the first quarter, however. "The professional PC sector was the bright spot in the US market," Kitagawa said. Enterprises and small- to medium-sized businesses were both believed to be around the peak of PC refreshment cycles. As these sales taper off through the rest of the year, however, increased consumer demand in the third and holiday quarters is expected to drive growth for the second half of the year.

The brightest spot in the US for the second quarter was Apple, grabbing 10.7 percent market share. That's certainly a recovery: after breaking the 10 percent share barrier in the third quarter last year, Apple slid down a bit earlier this year. But the company's sales once again far exceeded the industry average, boosting it back up to third place. Gartner attributed the increased sales to refreshed Sandy Bridge-based iMacs going to consumers and educational institutions, but we believe that demand for recently updated MacBook Pros was also a major factor.

HP continues to hold its top spot in the US, followed by Dell. Though the Round Rock, Texas-based PC vendor has been bleeding sales for some time, its decline in the US has slowed recently. Dell's unit sales were down 10 percent year-over-year in the second quarter, compared to 12 percent in the first quarter. Toshiba had a slight increase in sales, and though its share is up slightly year-over-year, it's down almost two points from the first quarter. Acer continues to slide down in share, with sales down almost 25 percent year-over-year for the second quarter in a row, enough to drop the company down two spots to fifth place domestically.

The situation in the worldwide PC market is a bit brighter, with overall growth at just over 2 percent. Still, that's far below the 6-7 percent growth predicted in the first quarter. Once again, Gartner attributes the softening of the market to demand for netbooks and low-cost notebooks being supplanted by mobile devices like "media tablets." Besides the increased focus on tablets, many of which just recently launched, vendors are also shifting from mature markets like the US and Europe to emerging markets like Latin America and Asia, which are growing in the double digits.

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

HP and Dell, the number one and two vendors worldwide, were up slightly year-over-year. Lenovo posted impressive 23 percent growth in shipments to jump up to number three. Acer also saw a similar plunge in sales worldwide as it did in the US as it dropped from number two to number four. Toshiba saw a slight decline in sales year-over-year, though it continues to hold on to fifth place.

Toshiba's sales were about 4.4 million for the second quarter. If sales continue to dip for Toshiba, it could create an opening for Apple to rank among the world's top PC vendors for the first time in a very long time.

Note: The data used for this report comes from preliminary figures supplied by both Gartner and IDC. Figures for the third quarter US and worldwide PC sales were averaged from both data sets. Historical trend data is compiled from Gartner.