Gartner has released its latest report on the state of the worldwide PC industry. Despite the poor economy in many countries, the PC market has continued to grow by 15% thanks to the low cost and very popular netbook.

The worldwide PC market shipped 80.6 million units in Q3 2008. HP kept its lock on the top spot on the PC sellers list followed by Dell, then Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, and others. PC makers in the US broke down like this. Dell maintained its top spot, HP was second, Apple held third followed by Acer and Toshiba.

“The mini-notebook segment experienced strong growth in the global PC, led by robust growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region,” said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner's Client Computing Markets group. “In the North America market, the economic crunch created more interest in the sub $500 segment. Because the mini-notebook is still a new segment, it is too early to determine if the emerging segment created new market opportunities, or if it cannibalized lower priced systems.”

Via Gartner