And HP seems confident of its performance going forward. The fiscal fourth-quarter earnings view it issued today is above expectations, and the company is maintaining its fiscal-year earnings target. That bodes well for the industry.

“Business is stabilizing,” HP CEO Mark Hurd said in a statement. “We made positive gains in extending our market leadership in key segments and strengthening our competitive position….We are confident that HP will be an early beneficiary of an economic turnaround and will continue to outperform when conditions improve.”

“PC unit growth was stronger than we expected in all markets but Eastern Europe in the first quarter of 2009. In particular, consumer shipments were much stronger than we anticipated,” said Gartner’s George Shiffler. “However, professional shipments continued to struggle, and we think much of the growth in consumer units was due to vendors and the channel restocking inventories rather than an upsurge in demand.”

Well, hopefully that will all change after the October launch of Windows 7, right?

Nope. Not according to Gartner (IT), anyway. Unless Microsoft (MSFT) is planning another $300 million ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld.

“Unless Microsoft mounts a major marketing campaign in support of Windows 7, we think consumers will simply adopt the new operating system as they would normally buy new PCs and/or replace old ones,” Shiffler said. “As for professional users, we still expect them to put off adopting the new OS for at least a year until they have fully tested their applications against it.”

“PC unit growth was stronger than we expected in all markets but Eastern Europe in the first quarter of 2009. In particular, consumer shipments were much stronger than we anticipated,” said Gartner’s George Shiffler. “However, professional shipments continued to struggle, and we think much of the growth in consumer units was due to vendors and the channel restocking inventories rather than an upsurge in demand.”

Well, hopefully that will all change after the October launch of Windows 7, right?

Nope. Not according to Gartner (IT), anyway. Unless Microsoft (MSFT) is planning another $300 million ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld.

“Unless Microsoft mounts a major marketing campaign in support of Windows 7, we think consumers will simply adopt the new operating system as they would normally buy new PCs and/or replace old ones,” Shiffler said. “As for professional users, we still expect them to put off adopting the new OS for at least a year until they have fully tested their applications against it.”

Clearly, the global slowdown in tech spending is taking its toll on the company, though CEO Mark Hurd insists otherwise. Said Hurd, “HP is a market leader executing well in a tough market.”

Analysts begged to differ. “PC revenue declined 19 percent, server storage declined 18 percent, year over year,” Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brent Bracelin told Reuters. “Their printer hardware business declined more than 30 percent, year over year. The pace of the erosion in hardware was more severe than we expected….They did a good job of managing expenses in the quarter, but as you think about the fundamentals here going forward, they lowered their guidance from a revenue and profitability standpoint, and certainly we don’t have a ton of confidence, given the pace of erosion in their business. There could be further erosion from here.”

As expected, demand for PCs in the U.S. faced a challenging environment, with a substantial reduction in spending among both consumer and commercial segments amid tightening credit, eroding confidence, and growing unemployment. Not only unit growth was constrained, “but the value of the market also shrank as a result of competitive pricing and the introduction of lower-priced mini notebooks,” said IDC analyst Doug Bell. “Unfortunately, the first half of 2009 looks pretty shaky as the economic fundamentals need to recover before spending on PCs will resume.”

Gartner’s assessment of the quarter was slightly more upbeat, but nothing to celebrate. Fourth-quarter PC shipments worldwide rose 1.1 percent. That’s something. But it also represents the worst growth rate since 2002.

“The fourth quarter started out with a relatively optimistic view, but then it got worse every month,” Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa explained. “In the fourth quarter, U.S. businesses quickly cut IT spending with public sectors, including some government and education buyers, postponing PC procurement due to budget crisis concerns. PC vendors focused on the professional market were especially hit by the weakening market conditions.”

Ya don’t say….

A few other bullet points worth noting here:

• Apple’s (AAPL) share of the U.S. computer market fell to eight percent during the fourth calendar quarter of 2008 from 9.5 percent, thanks to Acer apparently.
• Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) remains the top PC vendor worldwide, with 19.1 percent market share. Dell (DELL) is second with 13.2 percent–down a full percentage point from last year.

John Locke (played by Terry O’Quinn) and his Apple II in ABC’s “Lost”

“Because they’re the super-small-market share guy, they get all these statements about them.” Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said that about Apple back in 2005. And while it’s essentially still true, it’s less so than it has been in years past. In separate reports today, research houses Gartner (IT) and IDC (IDC) both note that Apple has climbed to third place in the desktop market in the U.S. Gartner figures Apple’s share of state-side PC shipments for the second quarter of 2008 to be 8.5 percent, up from 6.4 percent in the quarter a year earlier. IDC pegs it at 7.8 percent for the second quarter this year, up from 6.2 percent in last year’s second quarter. And that puts the company in third place in the domestic PC market–ahead of Acer, if you believe Gartner. And in fourth place behind Acer if you believe IDC.

Not that it matters all that much. Because regardless of whose metrics you prefer, Apple (AAPL) still lags far behind the two PC sales leaders. Dell (DELL) is still the No. 1 seller of PCs in the U.S., with 32 percent of the market according to IDC. HP is No. 2, with 25 percent. And in terms of worldwide sales, Apple hasn’t even cracked the Top 5. Yet.

It’s definitely No. 1 in Hollywood though, as critic Roger Ebert noted a few years back. “Macs turn up in the movies all the time–not so much because of product placement, but because so many movie people use them and like them,” Ebert wrote. “A historian of the future, counting all the on-screen computers between 1983 and today, would likely conclude that Macs represented 90 percent of the computer market.”

John Locke (played by Terry O’Quinn) and his Apple II in ABC’s “Lost”

“Because they’re the super-small-market share guy, they get all these statements about them.” Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said that about Apple back in 2005. And while it’s essentially still true, it’s less so than it has been in years past. In separate reports today, research houses Gartner (IT) and IDC (IDC) both note that Apple has climbed to third place in the desktop market in the U.S. Gartner figures Apple’s share of state-side PC shipments for the second quarter of 2008 to be 8.5 percent, up from 6.4 percent in the quarter a year earlier. IDC pegs it at 7.8 percent for the second quarter this year, up from 6.2 percent in last year’s second quarter. And that puts the company in third place in the domestic PC market–ahead of Acer, if you believe Gartner. And in fourth place behind Acer if you believe IDC.

Not that it matters all that much. Because regardless of whose metrics you prefer, Apple (AAPL) still lags far behind the two PC sales leaders. Dell (DELL) is still the No. 1 seller of PCs in the U.S., with 32 percent of the market according to IDC. HP is No. 2, with 25 percent. And in terms of worldwide sales, Apple hasn’t even cracked the Top 5. Yet.

It’s definitely No. 1 in Hollywood though, as critic Roger Ebert noted a few years back. “Macs turn up in the movies all the time–not so much because of product placement, but because so many movie people use them and like them,” Ebert wrote. “A historian of the future, counting all the on-screen computers between 1983 and today, would likely conclude that Macs represented 90 percent of the computer market.”