Mac growth beating PCs

It's been a tough road for everyone in the tech sector over the past year, but there are small signs of recovery, especially for Apple.

(Credit: Apple, Inc.)

Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty says Apple is outperforming the PC market in sales growth, and this was before Apple released its new MacBook Pros in June, according to a report on Fortune's Apple 2.0 Wednesday. Of course, releasing a new notebook would only spur sales for the months after its release.

Huberty said that in May, Apple shipments were up 25 percent over April. In comparison, PC shipments for the same period were up only 1 percent, according to Fortune. As a result, she is raising her forecast for the this quarter to 2.5 million Macs.

In its fiscal second quarter 2009, Apple sold 2.2 million Macs, a 3 percent decline for the company over the year-ago quarter. While down, this isn't a significant decrease considering the economy.

However, if Huberty's predictions are true and Apple does sell 2.5 million Macs in the third-quarter, the company will see a nominal increase from the 2.496 million sold during last year's third-quarter.

Consumer interest in its products led Apple to the top of Nielsen's report released on Tuesday, documenting the most trafficked hardware Web sites. Apple more than doubled the traffic of its nearest competitor Hewlett-Packard