Even though economic uncertainty is pulling U.S. computer buying plans into a nose dive, Apple's prospects remain brighter than some of its PC rivals, a research firm said Wednesday.

"The U.S. market is heading south, and there's nobody that can escape unscathed," said Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave Research. "But it looks like Apple will handle this relatively well."

According to surveys ChangeWave conducted last month in the U.S., only 8 percent of consumers said they planned to buy a laptop in the next 90 days and just 7 percent said they would buy a desktop computer in the same period. Both those numbers, said Carton, were the lowest levels seen in the past 12 months. "There are some tough times out there for personal computer makers," said Carton. "This is part of the whole economic scenario."

But the slowdown will likely affect Apple less than some big-name competitors on the PC side. Of the people who said that they are planning to purchase a laptop in the next three months, 28 percent said they are picking Apple, down just 1 percentage point from ChangeWave's January 2008 survey. Of those who said they would buy a desktop in the next 90 days, 31 percent claimed they would buy from Apple; that's two points lower than January.

Both Hewlett-Packard and Dell, however, aren't expected to fare as well in the U.S. in the coming months: their shares of the projected buyers dropped more sharply than Apple's.

HP's share of likely notebook buyers, for example, slipped 2 percentage points from January, to 19 percent, and its share of the potential consumer desktop buyers dropped five points, to 18 percent. Meanwhile, Dell's share of the laptop buyers slipped two points from January, to 28 percent, while its portion of the desktop pool fell four percentage points, ending up at 32 percent.

Dell is actually in a tougher spot than HP, Carton said, because nearly 70 percent of HP's sales are outside the U.S., where the current economic slowdown will probably have less of an impact than in America. "I think the most exposed is Dell," he said.

Apple, on the other hand, is in a stronger position, even in a difficult market. "Apple has been growing -- its planned buying numbers grew by 50 percent over a year ago -- and now they look like they're maintaining," said Carton.