Acer overtakes ASUS in netbook market

You snooze you lose

New data published by display market research outfit DisplaySearch reveals the surprising news that Acer has already managed to overtake Asus in quarterly netbook sales, despite only entering the market in late July.

DisplaySearch says the category grew by over 160 percent compared to the previous quarter and it looks like a lot of that was down to the launch of the Acer Aspire One, which has grabbed 38.3 percent of the market from a standing start.

John F. Jacobs, director of notebook market research and author of DisplaySearch's report, said: "The demand for greater mobility is especially evident in certain geographies as a number of mini-note PC brands are partnering with telecom providers to subsidize mini-note PCs, much like they do mobile phones.

"Worldwide demand for these products is forecast to grow rapidly over the next few years with demand from a variety of sources, including early adopters, consumer and enterprise PC customers seeking a smaller or secondary notebook PC, as well as new PC customers in emerging markets. We expect the mini-note PC market to settle at approximately 16% share of the notebook PC market by 2011."

Here's the full rundown of netbook market share.

Table 1: Q3'08 Mini-Note PC Volume and Market Share by Brand