Though most of you are probably reading this blog post on an HP or Dell system, a growing minority of you are lapping up my words of wisdom on an Apple machine. That’s because Apple’s share of the desktop/laptop market grew more than 100% over the last year thanks in part to its success in the SMB segment, according to new research from AMI-Partners. 

The report found that among small businesses, which AMI defines as those with between one and 99 employees, Apple increased its desktop market share to 12% from 7% and its share of the notebook market to 8% from 5%, both on a year-over-year basis. 

Even better for Apple was its growth among medium-sized businesses (orgs with between 100 and 999 workers, as defined by AMI), upping its desktop market share to 27% from 13% and its notebook market share to 18% from 8%, again on a year-over-year basis. 

AMI credits Apple’s rise in the SMB segment to its “recent launch of the industry’s first-ever backlit LED screen for Mac Pro” and the allure of the Mac OS X Tiger, “which supports multiple OSs, including Windows, on a single platform,” among other reasons. 

Still, Apple’s overall share of the desktop/laptop market remains relatively small.  

A Piper Jaffray analyst estimated last December that Apple’s piece of the PC pie then stood at around 3%, with only modest growth expected for 2007.  

Now, I’m not sure if by “PC market” Piper Jaffray was referring to just desktops or desktops and laptops. Either way, Apple’s market share is still small change compared with the aforementioned HP and Dell, which own 19% and 15% of the overall desktop/laptop market, respectively. 

Clearly, Apple still has a long way to go, but it has to be encouraged by these latest SMB numbers. Whether Apple can maintain its momentum and eventually make headway in the overall desktop/laptop market will be interesting to watch. 

On another topic, Apple is also making headlines this week, you may have heard, thanks to the debut of something called the iPhone.