by , 3:20 PM EST, March 5th, 2008

Apple's Macintosh market share in the U.S. has been climbing and is at about 8 percent. On Wednesday, iSuppli published preliminary results for Apple's worldwide Q4 Mac shipments, and the numbers show Apple now at 2.9 percent, up 39 percent year over year. That's larger growth than any other PC manufacturer.

While Hewlett Packard continues to lead in worldwide market share and had impressive growth year over year, Apple is still growing fastest among all the PC manufacturers with 39.3 percent year over year growth. That continues to place Apple 6th amongst all PC makers.

Source: iSuppli, March 2008

"Apple�s reinvigorated Intel microprocessor-based products obviously are striking a chord with PC buyers," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for iSuppli.

Apple has held the number six position since Q3, 2007 and has been nipping at Toshiba's heels ever since.