If one looks back over the past several years, a trend has been quite clear at Lenovo: Once a non-player in the U.S. market even after buying IBM’s PC business a decade ago, Lenovo focused marketing dollars and efforts as well as products that targeted American businesses and consumers.

Lenovo continues to cash in with U.S. shipments growing in double digits for each of the last four quarters.

“Lenovo’s laser-like focus on the US market is now paying especially strong dividends as we defy the industry decline with double-digit shipment growth and ongoing market share gains that have elevated us to a solid No. 33 position, all while maintaining strong profitability,” said Gianfranco Lanci, Lenovo’s president and chief operating officer.

Here’s a brief recap:

  • Marketing initiatives date to several programs with the National Football League.
  • Partnering efforts put Lenovo on store shelves at Best Buy.
  • And where does Lenovo unveil the majority of its new products – from PCs to phones and more? The Consumer Electronics Show each January in Las Vegas.

So on Monday when the latest PC sales statistics were disclosed by research firms Gartner and IDC, U.S. sales were again a bright spot for Lenovo. Yes, Lenovo’s global sales declined 7.2 percent. But its market share improved to 19.3 percent from 18.8 percent year-over-year.

In the U.S., however, Lenovo improved sales by 200,000 to 1.9 million, a 14.6 percent surge.

Market share grew to 14.5 percent from 11.8 percent in Q1 2015.

That performance put some daylight between Lenovo and Apple (12.7 share, sales down 0.3 percent) for third place.

And now Lenovo is within 10 points of No. 2 HP, which was hit by a 17.3 percent decline and a drop in market share to 23.7 percent from 26.7 percent. In fact, Dell is the new leader at 26.3 percent share.

Lanci was responding to a request for comment about the latest statistics from WRAL TechWire.

Overall, Lanci remains positive about PC sales even as the company continues to diversify and put more emphasis on other products such as smartphones as well as servers.

“The latest quarterly results serve to confirm that our focus on our core PC business as a growth engine for the company as we continue building out our mobile and data center growth engines is a the right formula for driving future success,” he said via email.

“We will continue to leverage industry consolidation amid continuing gains in commercial refresh driven by Windows 10 and the industry-leading innovations of our new convertible and detachable products to achieve our goal of achieving 30 percent worldwide PC market share.”

Lenovo’s global market share climb to 19.3 percent is up half a point from a year ago, according to Garnter. IDC reported Lenovo’s share as 20.1.

In a statement, Lenovo sought to put a positive spin on the results:

“IDC and Gartner both announced today their worldwide PC market share rankings for the 1st quarter of 2016. Lenovo maintained its position as the world’s #1 PC company with 20.1 percent (IDC) market share, a position the company has held for twelve consecutive quarters. 

“The company continued to outgrow the market despite a challenging environment that saw significant declines in all regions.

“Of note, Lenovo continued to see significant gains in the U.S. market with double-digit shipment growth in each of the last four quarters, including growth in the latest quarter that approached a 27% premium to the market overall, while passing Apple to secure the No. 3 spot in the market.”