Key quotes from the article:

"Apple Inc.'s share of the laptop market is growing -- the company now sells more than one in every six laptops purchased in the U.S., a research firm said today."

"Apple's definitely up," said Stephen Baker, an analyst at Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group Inc. "Their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace."

"NPD, which collects its data primarily from retail sources and excludes most online and all direct sales, said Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops accounted for 17.6% of June's unit sales, an uptick of more than three percentage points from May's 14.3%."

"The market share increase pushed Apple past Gateway Inc. into third place on NPD's list of laptop sales leaders, behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Toshiba Corp. Research firm IDC also has Apple in the third spot; data it released last month put Apple's share of U.S. sales at 5.6%, far behind leaders HP (28.4%) and Dell (23.6%) but tied with Gateway."

You can read the full article here.

Switch To A Mac Commentary
The NPD data is more telling from a trend perspective.  When analyzed, the data means that MacBook and MacBook Pro sales increased by 23 percent year-over-year since June 2006.  That is simply a fantastic growth metric that clearly demonstates the ever-growing popularity of Mac portables.  More people are making the switch and these numbers provide additional insight into the trend.

Related Articles

• InfoWorld: Dell takes huge hit as Apple laptop sales soar