Even though Mac sales were up 31% in the fourth quarter of 2009, Apple couldn't keep up with cheaply priced Windows PCs, falling to the number five spot in the U.S., research firm IDC said on Wednesday according to ComputerWorld.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, rival analysts at Gartner said Apple's growth was at 23%, but that still put them in fifth place behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer and Toshiba.  The new spot for Apple is down one from the same quarter.

"The U.S. market last quarter continued to be very price driven," Mikako Kitagawa, a Gartner analyst said.  "If a company is not in the low-priced market, it's absolutely difficult for it to increase market share.  And Apple did not do as well as others in share because of its prices."

Despite a difference in numbers, IDC felt similarly.  "The U.S. market exploded in the fourth quarter," IDC research manager David Daoud explained.  "The vendors responded with new low price points to stimulate demand and face competition."  Even though Apple gave the iMac desktops new life, and brought in a lower-end MacBook in October, they opted to not drop prices during the quarter.

IDC said that overall, U.S. computers sales hit a record high of 20.7 million units for the quarter.  "These preliminary results indicate the recovery of the PC market on a global level," said Kitagawa.

Apple is due to release its official sales figures on Monday, January 25, at which point it will hold a conference call with Wall Street analysts.