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The research company says that the weak economic conditions seem to have contributed to strong ASP (average-selling-price) pressures in the notebook PC market, which in turn have helped drive even stronger consumer demand.

Furthermore notes the company, the ASP pressures have also "benefited the larger PC vendors with market share gains at the expense of their smaller counterparts".

According to data from Gartner, HP continued to lead the global PC industry, maintaining the top position with 17.1% growth and a worldwide PC shipment market share of some 18.1% in Q2.

Second-place Dell showed even stronger growth at 21.9%, with its Q2 market share moving up to 15.6% from 14.8%.
And Apple has said it shipped over 2.4 million Macintosh computers in Q2, representing a massive 41% in growth and a 43% surge in revenue increases.

Acer, another aspirant for the top 3 position had growth of nearly 19%, although its market share increase was miniscule, going from 9.2 to 9.4% over a 12 month period.

Lenovo seems to be the worst performer in the name-brand category, with a market share slip of 0.1% to 7.8%, although its overall growth exceeded 29%.

However at the other end of the spectrum, Gartner also noted that smaller manufacturers were being exposed to all these pricing pressures, with a total market share decline, from 46.2% in 2007 to 44.8% in 2008.