Aiming for the top
Market researcher iSuppli isn't the first to announce Acer is now the second biggest seller of PCs in the world; IDC made that announcement a month and a half ago. But another independent confirmation cements Acer's status and now HP is firmly in its sights.
While total PC shipments rose by only 1.1 percent in the third quarter, year-on-year, Acer managed 16.6 percent growth in that time. Meanwhile Dell, the previous second-placed vendor, saw its shipments fall by 5.9 percent.
Pretty much all the growth in the PC market in the past year has come from consumers buying mobile PCs, with netbooks being the star performers. While it was late to the party, Acer made up for lost time and is now the number one netbook vendor. By contrast Dell hasn't done nearly so well in this sector and has suffered from its high exposure to the enterprise market.
"Acer's rise to the number two rank in the global PC business reflects not only its strong performance in the notebook segment, but also the historic rise of Asia as a primary force in the computer industry," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms research, at iSuppli.
"The third-quarter performances of Acer and Lenovo are just the latest development in the long-term rise of Asian manufacturers in the global PC market. The Asian manufacturers are a growing force in the global PC business due to their aggressive pricing along with their ability to quickly react and embrace new developments, such as the netbook PC."
