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About 48.5 percent of all
| PC Market Share in U.S. Retail Desktop PCs | ||
| Vendor | Aug. '98 % | Sept. '98 % |
| HP | 26.7 | 32.5 |
| Compaq | 33.5 | 24.2 |
| IBM | 12.9 | 17.3 |
| Packard Bell NEC | 9.1 | 10.0 |
| Apple | 6.6 | 4.4 |
| Source: Computer Intelligence | ||
Strong campaigns by HP and IBM have put them in the No. 1 and 2 rankings, respectively, within the sub-$1,000 retail desktop market, Sargent said.
Compaq, however, was No. 2 overall in desktop sales in September (see chart): HP was No. 1 and IBM was No. 3 overall. Interestingly, Apple Computer was off from the previous month dropping to 4.4 percent from 6.6 percent.
In the total market--desktop and notebook PCs--Compaq is still the leader with about a 26 percent share.
"HP and IBM were both very 
aggressive when it came to releasing models based on the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) K6-2 chip. Compaq, on the other hand, was somewhat tentative and has only recently come out with an AMD K6-2-[based system], and only in small
volumes," Sargent stated.
HP has come on strong in the last few months. HP had the top selling consumer PC in August, according to market researchers.
In the processor world, AMD's K6-2 was the most popular, he said, followed by the Intel Pentium II and Celeron chips.
The AMD K6-2 was the leading choice among retail desktop shoppers with 35.8 percent share in September, Sargent said. The Intel Pentium II and Intel Celeron followed with 28.2 percent and 9.6 percent respectively.
"AMD's dominance becomes even more striking when you look at PCs priced under $1,000. Within this segment AMD made up 68 percent of sales with Intel making up 16.2 percent and Cyrix making up 15.6 percent. The AMD K6-2 is clearly a winner," Sargent said.
However, it is important to note that Intel chips overall were still the most popular. The Intel Pentium II and Celeron combined had the largest share at about 38 percent.
