Lenovo, which continued the second quarter of its joint venture with Fujitsu, holds the to the top spot in shipments of traditional PCs with 24% of the global market share, according to IDC.

HP Inc. grew a modest 0.3% year on year but still reached its tenth consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth and slightly outgrew its market share from a year ago. It faced a tough quarter in the U.S. as well as Latin America.

Dell Inc. tied with Lenovo in terms of year-on-year growth at 5.8% and further expanded its market share versus a year ago. A strong showing in desktop volume overall and a great EMEA quarter were the driving forces behind its results.

IDC says that Acer climbed to 4th place with strong performances in education and gaming. The company has continued to focus on building out a comprehensive Chrome OS portfolio and its gaming notebooks have also garnered significant uptake.

Apple finished the quarter in 5th place, declined over 11%, and was the only top 5 company to underperform the overall market.

Top Companies, Worldwide Traditional PC Shipments, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Third Quarter 2018 (Preliminary results, shipments are in thousands of units)
Company	3Q18 Shipments	3Q18 Market Share	3Q17 Shipments	3Q17 Market Share	3Q18/3Q17 Growth
1. Lenovo*	16,152	24.0%	15,273	22.5%	5.8%
2. HP	15,359	22.8%	15,308	22.5%	0.3%
3. Dell Inc	11,466	17.0%	10,842	16.0%	5.8%
4. Acer Group	4,874	7.2%	4,490	6.6%	8.5%
5. Apple	4,762	7.1%	5,387	7.9%	-11.6%
Others	14,775	21.9%	16,671	24.5%	-11.4%
Total	67,387	100.0%	67,971	100.0%	-0.9%
Lenovo (excluding Fujitsu volume in 3Q17)**	16,152	24.0%	14,491	21.3%	11.5%
Source: IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, October 2018

The market research firm said that shipments of traditional PCs (desktop, notebook, and workstation) totaled nearly 67.4 million units in the third quarter of 2018 (3Q18), marking a decline of 0.9% in year-on-year terms.

The traditional PC market has trended toward stabilization since 2017 and even flirted with solid growth in 2Q18. While demand from mature regions remained key to the market, many emerging markets had to contend with unfavorable currency headwinds and other politico-economic factors that cramped demand. In addition, heading into Q3 there were some concerns about processor shortages. Despite these concerns, most of the top OEMs were able to fulfill a sizable portion of their demand and outperform the market. All in all, the quarter appears to have been driven by pockets of strong demand as well as a focus on increasing inventory ahead of further supply issues and expected price hikes. From a geographic perspective, all regions exceeded forecast, though Latin America and Asia/Pacific saw year-on-year declines.