Apparently, more people in North America have already gotten used to the idea of owning a PC system which runs despite the lack of a separate CPU (if you have an iMac, that is) and has only one visible button on its mouse. The latest sales reports from Gartner's Client Computing Markets group shows that Apple is now the third largest PC vendor in the country.

The Cupertino-based company saw sales of nearly 1.4 million units during the second quarter of 2008, which ended in June. Apple gained a growth of more than 38 percent in sales, alongside Dell and HP which also gained 11.9 percent and 5.6 percent with their own sales.

Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner, attributed the company's success to the home PC segment, as well as the education segment for its phenomenal sales record. Apple was able to bump off Acer from its top three slot in PC sales, as the latter actually saw a decline of 20 percent in unit sales.

On the global scale, Apple has yet to make its mark with the five other worldwide leaders in PC sales. Kitagawa explained that the reason behind this is the sharp decline in mobile PC prices due to economic uncertainties hitting PC revenues. In this aspect, HP and Dell still rule supreme in the global PC markets.