While Apple may be focusing a lot of its attention on the iPhone latterly , consumer are clearly still interested in the fellowship ’s computer offering . Data from one market enquiry firm register Apple ’s notebook byplay separate 17 percentage while another enquiry house said Apple has moved into third place among computer Creator .

harmonise to NPD , Apple ’s U.S. retail notebook market place portion for June 2007 was 17.6 percent , an increase of 2.2 percent points over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 percent market ploughshare .

As well as the notebook computer are doing , Apple ’s overall stomach among computer Creator is up too .

According to data point from research firm IDC , Apple ’s continued rise in reckoner sales event set up it in third place overall among all computer makers in the U.S. This is the first time since 1996 that Apple find itself this mellow on the list of top merchandising manufacturers .

Dell took the top spot with HP coming in second place of entire building block sales . With Apple take the number three spot , Gateway and Acer round out the top five .

The good news continues for Apple — with increased notebook computer sale agitate it fore , the companionship now has an overall market parcel of 5.9 percent , up 1.1 per centum points from the 4.8 percent it posted this time last year .

In its most late fiscal quarter Apple trade 1.76 million Macs , a 33 - percent rise over what it shipped in the third quarter of 2006 and 2.5 times the diligence - wide growth rate release by market - research business firm IDC .

Mac sales agreement for the quarter marked a book for the company , topping the previous quarterly senior high of 1.61 million Macs ship during the fourth quarter of 2006 .

While there was a rise in desktop sales for the fourth part — 634,000 units equate to 529,000 for the same period in 2006 — laptop unit of measurement sales skyrocketed 42 percent to 1.13 million portables . All told , 64 percent of the Macs sold during the one-fourth were laptops .

Update : Clarified Apple ’s marketplace share was in the U.S. and fixed the language for the percentage increases . 10:20 pm ET