Lenovo secured the top spot in the worldwide PC market with HP Inc came second as the global PC shipments hit 67.2 million units in the third quarter of 2018 -- a 0.1 per cent increase from the third quarter last year, research company Gartner said on Thursday.

Lenovo registered a growth of 10.7 per cent, driven by regained traction in the commercial market and its joint venture with Fujitsu.

HP Inc. was second but recorded its fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipment growth.

"HP showed strong desktop shipment growth, which indicated strong demand among corporate buyers," said Gartner.

The EMEA, Asia-Pacific and Japan markets experienced growth in the third quarter while the US and Latin America declined.

"The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades. We expect the Windows 10 upgrade cycle to continue through 2020 at which point the upgrade demand will diminish," said Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Analyst at Gartner.

"Despite the third quarter typically showing strong consumer PC sales due to the back-to-school season, weakness in consumer PC demand continued, offsetting the strong sales in the business market," he added.

Dell at third position experienced its 10th consecutive quarter of shipment growth, with growth of 5.3 per cent in the third quarter this year.

"Although the third-quarter results did not show any material impact, the Intel CPU shortage could influence the PC market moving forward with price increases and changes to the vendor landscape," Kitagawa predicted.

PC shipments in Asia-Pacific totalled 24.3 million units -- a 0.3 per cent increase from the third quarter of 2017.

Shipments in China grew 0.8 per cent, showing a continued gradual recovery from a steady decline over the past few quarters.

Microsoft became one of the top five PC makers in the US for the first time owing to its Surface devices.

HP Inc. continued to be the market leader in the US with 30.7 per cent of the market.