The folks in Cupertino must be doing a happy dance today. Data from both IDC and Gartner indicate that the company is making significant inroads in the US market, an indication that its agressive marketing campaign and goodwill among consumers is doing it a heckuva lot of good.

In the IDC survey, Apple’s share increased 32 percent year over year in the third quarter. It’s share stood at 9.1 percent, up from 7.3 percent in 2007. It still remained in third place in US shipments, and is still so far unable to crack into the top five manufacturers worldwide.

Gartner measured Apple’s US share at a slightly higher 9.5 percent, up 29.4 percent from the previous year. There too, Apple’s gains were not enough to break into the top five worldwide. Both firms said the Cupertino company was building its share on top of continued strength in notebooks.

I did get a bit of flak from readers about my comment in the Macbook post regarding how I thought it was unfortunate that Apple did not provide a budget notebook during its Tuesday presentation.

I’m sticking to that comment, and this quarter is going to show it. As consumers pocketbooks continue to thin, people will become more budget-minded. All the consumer goodwill in the world will do nothing if they can’t afford it.

Here’s hoping that Apple sees this coming, and takes a hit on its margins to keep its sales afloat. Selling at less of a profit is much better than not selling it at all, don’t you think?

 
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