New figures for US consumer and business spending on computers in the first calendar quarter of 2024 show Apple's iPad leading tablet sales, and the Mac coming close to the top for growth in PCs shipped.

The new figures are from Canalys, which has previously reported a bleak first quarter for Apple in China. In its report for the US, its figures are much more positive.

Overall, the PC market — defined as computing devices other than tablets — is said to have seen shipments up 5% year over year, in Q1 2024. In the consumer and small business market, that figure is up 9%.

For desktop and notebook computers, Apple saw an annual growth of 22%. That puts it in second place for growth, beaten only by Lenovo's 22.4%.

It means that Apple had 14.2% of the desktop and notebook computer market in this quarter. It shipped approximately 2,102,000 Macs, compared to 1,723,000 in Q1 2023.

The picture is a little different in tablets, though, as Apple saw an annual decline of 8.8%. However, apart from Samsung which saw a 2% growth, all tablet vendors declined year over year.

Apple's decline was the least, with Amazon seeing a fall of 21.5%, and Microsoft getting a 30.1% drop.

In total, Apple shipped 4,928,000 iPads in the quarter, down from 5,404,000 the year before. Nonetheless, the iPad remains dominant with 50.8% of the market.

By comparison, that's more than the next four tablet vendors combined. The closest to Apple in tablet sales is Samsung, with 18.5% of the market, while Microsoft has 2.7%.

Canalys expects that the growth will continue into 2025. It says that's due to both Windows 10 coming to its end of life, spurring upgrades, and the addition of AI features to both PCs and Macs.

Note that Apple had no iPad launches in either Q1 2023 or Q1 2024. It launched its latest iPad Pro and iPad Air in May 2024.