PC Sales Fall, Mac Sales Rise in the US (HPQ, DELL, AAPL)

Fourth quarter sales of desktop computers in the US fell by nearly -6% year-over-year according to the latest estimate from Gartner Inc. (NYSE: IT). US sales were weak for leading vendors Hewlett Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), down -26% and Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), down -4.5%. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) posted a sharp gain in US sales — up more than 20% year-over-year. Sales figures do not include tablets like Apple’s iPad.

Globally, Gartner reports that unit sales fell by -1.4%, from 93.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 92.2 million units last quarter. Dell’s sales rose 7.8% globally, trailing Lenovo and Asus, both of which posted gains of more than 20%. HP’s sales were off -16% and Acer’s sales were down -18.4%. Apple is lumped with ‘others’ in global sales estimates.

For the full year, Gartner estimates that sales grew by about 0.5%, from a total of 350.9 million units in 2010 to 352.8 million.