Apple’s the fifth-biggest PC manufacturer in the UK and is bucking industry trends with strong sales across Western Europe, despite overall industry decline in the face of the weak economy, the analysts at Gartner said today.

Most of the vendors are facing a difficult time in the UK market. “Interestingly, two vendors at either end of the price spectrum are winning the battle. At one end, Acer continued to provide price-conscious products through multiple channels to attract a wider buying audience. At the other end, Apple leveraged the “halo” effect of the Apple brand created by the iPods and iPhones into the PC arena, dominating the mid to higher price brackets,” said analyst Ranjit Atwal.

In the UK, Acer gained the No. 1 position while Samsung is closing the gap on Apple in fifth place, with 4.8 per cent market share. Samsung also saw the highest performance of the quarter, with 206.6 per cent growth year-on-year.

PC shipments in the UK totalled 3.3 million units in the third quarter of 2009, a decrease of 2.4 per cent compared with the same period in 2008. “The decline in the PC market in the UK has slowed down and the return to growth will be slow and a difficult process,” said Mr Atwal. “While the consumer market continued to defy the economic environment, the business market was still very weak.”

Overall, PC shipments in Western Europe totalled 16.7 million units in the third quarter of 2009, a slight decrease of 0.3 per cent compared with the same period in 2008, according to Gartner.

“The Western European PC market saw varied results across Europe with two of the largest markets, Germany and France showing growth, and smaller markets like Spain and Northern Europe exhibiting a decline,” said Atwal.

The Q3 Gartner figures for the Western European PC market show annual growth of 3.7 percent in Germany and 1.9 percent in France, but a decline of 2.4 percent in the UK.

Mini-notebooks were the driving force behind the sustained growth in the consumer market in the third quarter of 2009, the analysts said.