Apple’s sales in China have surpassed those of China’s biggest computer maker, Lenovo, which is also the third largest PC vendor in the world.

Lenovo reported that its sales in China rose by 23.4 percent from last year to $2.8 bn, but it could not beat the maker of iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers with the slowing down in demand for demand for PCs.

Apple’s sales in the second quarter rose by 6 percent from a year ago to 3.8 bn, including Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Lanovo considers Hong Kong and Taiwan under the emerging market category, which has seen strong growth over the past quarter.

However, Lenovo’s sales on those two markets “would not be enough to make up the 1bn gap,” Jenny Lai, head of Taiwan Research at HSBC said.

The latest product launches of Apple in China have triggered a lot of craze for the Cupertino based company, inspiring the company to increase the number of stores to 25 in China.

Lenovo has entered wireless Internet and launched smartphones and web-linked tablet computers in order to compete with Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC Corp.

Lenovo said PC shipments in Africa, Latin America and other emerging markets rose 45.7 percent in the latest quarter over a year earlier.

In North America, the shipment rose 30.8 percent, while those in Japan went up 14 percent.

In Europe and United States, the quarterly profit went up to $77 million compared to a $9 million loss a year earlier, said chairman, Liu Chuanzhi.

"This is a major improvement," Liu said on the conference call.

Lenovo is also expecting to see its results go better with its acquisition of Germany’s Medion, and its joint venture in Japan with NEC.

Emerging markets Japan Germany Samsung