Apple Inc. is outpacing the rest of the computer industry, with the company selling 60 per cent more units in the United States last month than it did a year ago, according to a report.

Apple's total share of the U.S. computer market rose to 14 per cent in February, up from nine per cent a year ago, said a report from consumer electronics tracking firm the NPD Group. Its dollar share of the computer market also rose to 25 per cent from 16 per cent.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company sold 60 per cent more computers and pulled in 67 per cent more revenue than it did a year ago, beating out the industry averages of nine per cent and five per cent, respectively, NPD said.

The company did particularly well in laptop sales, which saw a 64 per cent increase in units and 67 per cent rise in revenue. Moreover, Apple's new ultra-thin Macbook Air computer apparently didn't eat into sales of its Macbook Pro series, as some analysts had expected, but rather added to them.

"Macbook Air sales appear to be additive to total sales, rather than replacing Macbook Pro sales," said Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves in a research note to clients. "We believe a new set of corporate customers make up a meaningful portion of MacBook Air buyers."

The sales figures are good news for Apple, which is seeing growth in iPods flattening.

A consensus of Wall Street analysts expects Apple to sell 10.8 million iPods this quarter, a growth of only two per cent from last year.

One analyst estimates that, according to NPD numbers, Apple will sell 9.7 million to 10.5 million iPods this quarter, falling short of expectations.

The computer sales are also good news in that fears of a U.S. recession don't appear to have hit Mac buyers, who are obviously spending more on Apple products.

Separately, Apple on Tuesday announced the launch of its latest web browser, Safari 3.1. The company said it loads web pages 1.9 times faster than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 or 1.7 times faster than the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox 2.