PC market significantly improves during holiday shopping season

Worldwide PC shipments fell 1.5% in the fourth quarter, a big improvement from a 10.6% decline last holiday shopping season, with Lenovo Group holding the top position in the market despite close competition from HP Inc. . Lenovo shipped 15.7 million PCs during the quarter, a 1.7% year-over-year improvement, which lifted its share of the market slightly to 22.4%, according to IDC. HP was a stone's throw away, shipping 15.3 million, representing growth of 6.6% over the same quarter last year, as HP's share of the market grew to 21.7%. Rounding out the top four were Dell and Apple Inc. . Apple's PC shipments declined by 1% to 5.3 million year-over-year, despite reflecting sales of the new MacBook Pro, according to IDC. Gartner, another tracker of such metrics that doesn’t include Alphabet Inc.'s Chromebooks, was more pessimistic on the industry, reporting a 3.7% decline in total shipments.

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.