Apple Sells 1 of every 7 notebooks in US

Apple got help from the update to its MacBook laptops to push its share of the laptop market in the U.S. up nearly two points in May, to 14.3%, a research firm said today. According to NPD's data, the laptop "bounce" was 14% month-over-month.

The May boost put Apple's laptops in fourth place, behind Hewlett Packard Co., Toshiba Corp. and Gateway Inc., and moved its combined laptop-desktop sales share from 11.6% in April to 13% last month. In retail-only, Apple showed a slightly smaller increase, from 9.6% to 10.8%.

NPD collects its sales data primarily from retail point-of-sale sources, and excludes most online and all direct sales.

Desktop sales, meanwhile, continued to stagnate, although there too, Apple has an advantage.
Desktops sales are declining, but [Apple's] are declining a little less than others. Apple's desktop machines -- the all-in-one iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro -- accounted for 10.4% of all desktop sales in May, a small increase from April's 10.2%.

Laptop sales are hitting a couple of plateaus that even Apple won't escape. ASPs [average sales prices] have flattened out, and are pretty stable now month to month.