Laptop shipments top desktops for first time; Netbooks a factor
Global notebook shipments exceeded desktops on a quarterly basis for the first time ever, with Netbooks playing a decisive role, iSuppli said on Tuesday.
Acer's Netbook shipments appear to have been a deciding factor that catapulted notebook shipments over desktops.
(Credit: Acer)Notebook PC shipments rose almost 40 percent in the third quarter of 2008 over the same period in 2007, hitting 38.6 million units, said iSuppli, a market research firm based in El Segundo, Calif.
Netbooks may have been the deciding factor in pushing notebooks over the top.
"The big news from iSuppli's market share data for the third quarter was undoubtedly the performance of Taiwan's Acer," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at iSuppli, in a statement. "Acer shipped almost 3 million more notebooks in the third quarter than it did in the preceding quarter, with the majority of those 3 million being the company's Netbook products," Wilkins said.
And Acer is close to catching No.2 Dell because of the surge in Netbook shipments, according to Wilkins.
All of this resulted in lower desktop PC shipments, which fell by 1.3 percent in the third quarter over the previous year to 38.5 million units.
Global PC unit shipments rose 15.4 percent over the third quarter of 2007, with 79 million units shipped. Overall third-quarter PC shipments exceeded iSuppli's expectations of 12 percent year-over-year growth for the third quarter, the market researcher said.
Hewlett-Packard remained the No.1 PC supplier in the third quarter, with shipments of 14.9 million units, and a market share of 18.8 percent. Dell held onto second place with shipments of just under 11 million units, translating into a market share of 13.9 percent. Acer was No.3 with a market share of 12.2 percent, as shipments hit 9.7 million during the quarter.
Lenovo and Toshiba were ranked fourth and fifth, respectively.
iSuppli is revising its 2008 forecast upward. "In view of the better-than-expected third-quarter PC shipments, iSuppli has slightly increased its full year 2008 unit growth forecast from 12.5 percent to 13.0 percent," the firm said, adding that its revised 2009 outlook calls for PC unit growth of 4.3 percent.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
"Potable", it is not!
OTOH? they're about worthless for entertainment on any real scale (anything beyond simple games), can't do much with them graphics-wise, and they don't process large chunks of data so well. Since most of them also don't come with optical drives, playing a DVD on one is kinda problematic (though on-disk media works, depending on codec and etc).
Then again, it does have its uses - image storage during vacations, a way to quickly check email and surf for something, stuff like that.
One thing is for sure though - the desktop is dying as a consumer product. I use mine mostly as impromptu file servers these days, and for those occasions where I need a bit more 'oomph than my laptop can muster. It's more fun to have a laptop when sitting next to the missus (who has hers) than to be sitting halfway across the room from each other... so the laptop tends to give the best of both worlds, no?
- by bdollerup December 28, 2008 11:04 AM PST
- Finally, yhe US has joined Europe where this happened in countries such as Denmark in 2005
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(6 Comments);-)
I have faith that the desktop will never be replaced by the laptop completely, but it'll be very interesting to see what additional Atom's as well as the higher-end iCore7 will do for portable devices in general as well as desktops. It's also very interesting to see what the use of Atom and mobile CPU's will bting about. I guess where are on our way beyond a computer in every home towards a computer in every room + one for every member of the household.