by , 12:50 PM EDT, September 30th, 2008

According to NPD, Windows laptops only had about an 80 percent market share in June and July at brick-and-mortar stores. In retail dollars, the share was only about 65 percent as the rest went mostly to Apple.

Microsoft and its partners should dread the fact that one in every three dollars in retail store notebooks is going to Apple, according to Joe Wilcox in a report for eWeek's Microsoft Watch on Monday.

One problem is that inexpensive notebooks computers don't have the horsepower to run Vista, and that puts them at a disadvantage compared to Leopard.

In financial terms, Apple strategy of higher prices is paying off. PCs have only been able to muster a 1.5 percent gain in revenue growth, Apple has averaged 30 percent. Apple also is beating the PCs in unit growth, 35 percent for Apple vs. 10 percent for PCs. That has led to Apple rising to number four in the overall market share for notebooks.

Questions to ask next include whether Apple can maintain that surge and whether the surge on the bottom end, the low cost, so-called netbooks, will also eat into PC notebook market share, a competition that Microsoft is keenly aware of. Meanwhile the war for the notebook computer in retail outlets where customers can see and touch their prospective purchase continues with Apple making serious gains.