San Francisco, Feb 13 (IANS): With a market share of 24.3 per cent, HP retained its leadership position in the global notebook market in 2017 while Apple surpassed ASUS to reach the fourth spot with 9.6 per cent market share, a new report said on Tuesday.

According to market research firm TrendForce, HP's annual notebook shipments hit a new milestone of 40 million units -- a substantial increase of 10.5 per cent over 2016.

The global notebook shipments for 2017 registered 164.7 million units -- a year-on-year increase of 2.1 per cent.

"The global notebook market has benefited from biddings for notebook contracts in North America and regional economic recovery," said Kou-Han Tseng, TrendForce notebook analyst.

The updated MacBook Pro helped Apple expand shipments by 18 per cent for the whole year -- the highest growth rate among all the notebook brands.

"The market share of Apple reached 9.6 per cent, 1.3 percentage points up from 2016, which allowed Apple surpass ASUS and rank fourth," the report said.

The market share of ASUS dropped to 9.5 per cent.

Lenovo's laptop shipments witnessed a year-on-year drop of 4.9 per cent, making its market share down to 20.2 per cent at second place.

Dell remained at third place in the global ranking with a market share of 15.2 per cent.

"Acer continues to expand aggressively in the Chromebook market, and its notebook shipments growth in North American market raised its annual shipments by 0.6 per cent. Its market share recorded eight per cent growth," the report noted.

For 2018, the market share of the top six brands was expected to rise to 89.1 per cent, squeezing the room for other brands to develop.

On the other hand, Xiaomi and Huawei recorded growth in Chinese market, but the results of their overseas deployment are not clear yet, said the report.