Apple fourth largest PC vendor in Australia

Apple hasfor the first time become the fourth largest PC vendor in Australia, according to analyst firm Gartner. 

Apple has long been a top five PC vendor in the US, but achieved this for the first time in Australia in the the fourth quarter of 2011, analyst firm Gartner told iTnews, pipping Chinese PC maker Lenovo by 78,000 units.  

Apple shipped 178,892 Macs to Australia. This includes desktops and PCs but not iPads.

Apple’s 32 percent quarterly growth was very impressive when compared to HP's six percent decline. Acer Group, meanwhile grew at 15.5 percent and Dell at 10.5 percent.

HP's enterprise market helped maintain its lead, shipping 292,150 units to Australia, while Acer shipped 238,942 and Dell shipped 216,290.

Source: Gartner

Bumper financial performance

Wall Street analysts had gloomily predicted a slide in new iPhone sales for the March quarter, expecting it  would drag down Apple's astronomical share price, currently trading on the NASDAQ index at US$560 per share. 

But the company proved all wrong on Tuesday, reporting that fiscal second-quarter profits nearly doubled to US$11.6 billion. 

According to Apple, it sold four million Macs during the quarter, a seven percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. 

Apple announced it sold 11.8 million iPads year-on-year, while the four million Macs its sold represented a seven percent increase. 

Apple’s quarterly revenue was US$39.2 billion with quarterly net profit of US$11.6 billion, up from last year’s US$24.7 billion quarterly revenue and US$6 bilion net profiit.