HP's PC lead over Dell increases even further in Q3

As HP's market share soars, Dell's growth continues to underperform with PC shipment growth sagging to only 1.5% annually. Meanwhile, the flip-flop battle continues for the #3 and #4 slots.

Hewlett-Packard sold 16.8% more PCs worldwide in the third quarter of this year than the previous quarter, according to market research firm iSuppli, with just under 13.1 million PCs shipped. And its annual shipment growth rate of 32.7% is nothing short of astonishing; last quarter, that growth rate was only 4.4%.

Like the front-runner candidate in a political party primary, HP doesn't appear to be focusing on its challenger Dell. Instead, it could very well be writing Dell off completely, as the #2 player on the iSuppli list loses another 0.9% of global market share: down to 14.6%. HP absorbed literally all of Dell's losses, gaining 0.9% of share to 19.2%.

Dell still has a long way to fall to reach the plateau of #3 Lenovo and #4 Acer, which have been trading places with one another on iSuppli's Top 5 PC OEM list all year. But as iSuppli noted this morning, Acer has already displaced Dell as the world's #2 supplier of notebook PCs in the prior quarter. In fact, Acer's gains are almost ridiculous: a 68.8% annual gain in total PC shipments worldwide. Notebook sales account for nearly all of that gain, especially in its native and most emerging market: Asia, although Lenovo is still the #1 notebook supplier for China currently, according to iSuppli.

Twelve percent continues to be the benchmark rate of annual PC shipment growth, by iSuppli's calculation, so only Dell underperforms that mark in the Top 5 list. The Top 5 account for 44.1% of all the world's PCs sold, but surprisingly, that number slipped in the last quarter by 1.1%, and by 3.9% on the year. That fact would seem to point out that the principal reason, if not the sole one, for iSuppli's 12% number being as low as it is...is Dell.

Dell may have an opportunity next week to start rolling out its comeback plan, as it's scheduled to hold a big launch party for its XPS One PC in New York.