When Apple released its sales numbers for the last three months of 2004, it gave market research firm IDC the chance to compare Apple's place in the computer market with the big PC vendors' shares. So is Apple gaining ground or falling behind? Turns out it's doing a little bit of both. According to IDC, Apple's share of the desktop market continued to rise at the end of 2004, while its laptop position slipped. Over the course of the year, Apple gained nearly 1 percent in the U.S. desktop market and about 0.5 percent in the world market (the numbers don't include the Mac mini). After a rise during the year, Apple's U.S. laptop market share dropped back to roughly what it was one year before, and its world market share fell a bit. Why are laptop sales down when desktop sales are up? Apple declared 2003 the "Year of the Notebook," but it hasn't pushed laptops as hard since then. Also, rumors of a G5-based PowerBook debuting at Macworld Expo in January 2005 may have kept many customers from purchasing a new PowerBook.
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