Hit by hard drive shortages and slow economic conditions, the PC market has ended 2011 on a rather low note, with preliminary data from research firm IDC showing that PC sales in Q4 were of 92.7 million units, down 0.2% on-year. Despite the Q4 drop, the PC market still managed a decent result for the whole year, recording a 1.6% increase in shipments compared to 2010.

Back to the Q4 data though, we see HP maintaining its top position with 15.1 million shipped units and a market share of 16.31%. It's worth noting that, while it's still top dog, HP actually experienced a 15.93% drop in shipments compared to the same period of 2010. On second place, inching closer to HP is Lenovo, with a 14.04% share (the company managed a 36% growth over Q4 of 2010) while on third we find Dell securing 12.91% of the market.

The fourth place in Q4 was taken by Acer with 9.7 million shipped PCs (this translates into a 10.56% share), whereas the fifth place was grabbed by ASUS, who managed to ship 6.2 million units (up 26.29% on-year) and take a 6.73% share.

Looking at 2012, IDC is expecting the PC market to drop some more in Q1, but a recovery is predicted for the second half of the year. Fingers crossed?