Newly released statistics from research firms Gartner and IDC have a mix of good and bad news for global PC sales leader Lenovo.

Lenovo is now well ahead of Apple as the No. 3 PC seller in the U.S. thanks to a 9.2 percent growth surge year-over-year in the second quarter to just over 2.2 million shipments, Gartner says.

Apple sales, meanwhile, dropped 9.3 percent year over year to 1.87 million.

In terms of market share, Lenovo now stands at 14.5 percent, up a full point from a year ago. Apple slipped 1.5 points to 12.3.

Lenovo was able to capitalize on an overall growth in U.S. sales. In the first quarter of the year, Lenovo cited a “laser-like focus” on its U.S. marketing and sales effort as being crucial to generating growth.

Dell remains No. 1 and HP is a close No. 2 in U.S. sales. Both grew numbers and market share.

IDC reported similar numbers.

The bad news

Internationally, Lenovo’s market share climbed above 20 percent but sales fell.

“This was the fifth consecutive quarter of global PC shipment declines for Lenovo,” Gartner reported.

“The company experienced double-digit growth in the U.S. mobile PC market, but EMEA continued to be a challenge due to inventory built during the quarter. In Asia/Pacific, Lenovo’s shipments declined, but the decline was less than the overall average in the region.”

IDC also sees good/bad news for Lenovo in the data.

“Lenovo remained the worldwide PC market leader, and continued its strong growth in the U.S. market. However, shipments in other markets continued to decline, pulling down overall growth,” IDC noted.

“Lenovo’s lead in the share of total PC shipments shrunk over the past year from 1.8% a year ago to 0.4% this quarter. Nevertheless, the margin of leadership has fluctuated since Lenovo took the lead in 2013. Q2 2015 marked the largest lead Lenovo has ever held, and the company boosted its overall share to a peak of 21.7% in Q4 2015.”

Gartner noted that Lenovo shipments dropped to 13.2 million from 13.5 million year-over-year, a 2.2 percent drop.

The market share climbed to 20.5 percent from 19.9 percent.

Interestingly, HP and Dell both made sales gains.

HP Inc.climbed to 19,1 percent market share from 17.8 as sales increased by more than 200,000 to 12.28 million.

Dell is up to 15.2 percent from 14 percent with sales climbing to 9.8 million from 9.5 million.

Market analysis

So what’s going on?

“One of the ongoing problems in the PC market has been the price hike in selected regions due to the weakening local currency against the U.S. dollar,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “The price issue has impacted the EMEA, and Latin America regions for the past year. However, PC shipment declines became rather modest in the second quarter compared to previous quarters, which suggests a fading currency impact.”

As for the various markets, she noted:

“All regions except North America experienced a PC shipment decline. The Latin America region was still very weak largely because of political and economic instability. PC shipments in Latin America are expected to fall below 5 million units for the second quarter of 2016, which is a decline of more than 20 percent from the second quarter of 2015. These shipment results would be some of the lowest in the history of the Latin America PC industry.”

How other firms are doing

Here’s what IDC noted about Lenovo’s top competitors:

  • HP Inc. had a solid quarter, with growth returning to positive territory after a year of declines. The U.S. led regional growth with a gain of 11.5% from last year as the company rebounded from a couple of soft quarters, but other regions also saw growth in positive territory.
  • Dell also had a productive quarter, with worldwide growth recovering to over 4%. Dell managed a strong recovery in Japan, while also driving solid growth in the United States, although EMEA continued to drag on overall results.
  • ASUS also saw growth recover in 2Q16, benefitting from an easier year-on-year comparison. The vendor pulled just ahead of Apple for the number 4 spot in overall PC shipments.
  • Apple continues to face an increasingly competitive market as it awaits a refresh of its PC lineup. As a result, shipments experienced a decline from last year.