Research group Gartner has released the preliminary results of their Q3 2007 marketing report, which indicates Apple Inc.'s share of the U.S. computer market to be at 8.1%. As a point of comparison, Apple's market shares from the same time frame last year were at 6.2% - this indicates that the company enjoyed a 37.2% boost in growth compared to last year's figures.

Delving into these figures further, we find that Apple's U.S.-based Mac shipments for Q3 2007 totalled at around 1,338,000. The figures for last year are recorded to be 975,000 shipments. The Gartner report marks Apple as holding the third largest share among the U.S. PC market's top five vendors, although the company has experienced the biggest year-to-year growth among its competitors.

Hewlett-Packard experienced similar growth, with its market share increasing by 16.5% as compared to its figures from last year. Toshiba, just below Apple in Gartner's top five, reports 16.3% growth, while current market leader Dell experienced a 5.5% drop.

It'll be interesting to see how far Apple will go in the near future, or how the recently announced  Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 will affect their future sales.