Acer poised to overtake Dell in notebook market

Sales of notebooks are rising worldwide, but Taiwan's Acer, in particular, is continuing its skyrocketing growth.

Market research firm DisplaySearch released its quarterly report on the notebook market Monday, and found that the market grew 24 percent during the three months of the third quarter, and 42 percent in the last year.

A $348 Acer laptop was one of the featured items offered at Wal-Mart in a pre-Black Friday sale.

(Credit: Wal-Mart)

Hewlett-Packard remains the worldwide leader in notebooks by shipping 6.2 million portable PCs last quarter--72 percent more than the company shipped a year ago. Dell holds on to second place, but continues to lose ground, not only to HP, but to Acer.

While Dell still has 13.8 percent of the worldwide notebook market (behind HP's 21.4 percent), Acer continues to creep up on Dell, with 12.8 percent of notebook shipments. And in what should be more distressing to Dell, combining Acer with newly acquired Gateway and Packard-Bell puts the Taiwanese PC maker at 16.2 percent of the market, and just behind HP, according to DisplaySearch.

Of the top 10 notebook makers, all grew faster than the market with the exception of just two: Toshiba and Fujitsu-Siemens. Several smaller notebook brands significantly stepped up their shipments in the third quarter--Sony grew 94 percent to 1.6 million units, Asus at 73 percent to 1.2 million units, Lenovo at 54 percent to 2.8 million units, and Apple at 36 percent to 1.4 million units.

[john55440]

Apple's Share

Wow!, Apple's worldwide notebook share skyrocketed all the way to 4.6% -lol- much better than their desktop share.

[becareful]

Dell doing it to self

When offered a choice between two makers, with Acer being the less expensive,customers will look at support. Dell service center response has hit the bottom of the bucket. They did it to themselves for profit. Since Acer is less expensive for same or better quality you can guess who the buyer will go with even with no customer support.

[fred dunn]

BINGO!

The only way you will get a cheaper laptop from Dell is to go with their one year (bangalore) warranty, Acer too has a one year warranty.<br />If you go with any of Dell's "optional extended" warranties then you're already paying too much for too little.<br />As an IT Analyst I will recommend HP, Acer, Lenovo, then Dell in that order.