Taiwan-based PC maker Acer outpaced all other vendors in the fourth quarter of 2006, as its worldwide shipment of notebooks increased by more than 45% (about 3.4 million notebooks) compared to the third quarter (2.3 million), effectively knocking Toshiba out of third place, according to a new report by market research firm iSuppli. HP, the world"s leading PC vendor, saw its notebooks shipments increase by more than 32% in the same time period. Acer has used aggressive marketing and pricing to show customers that its notebooks are viable alternatives to ones produced by Dell and HP. "The company has been very public about its intention to capture the No. 3 spot in the mobile-PC market—and the fourth-quarter ranking shows the company is putting its money where its mouth is," Matthew Wilkins, an analyst with iSuppli, wrote in the firm"s April 5 report.
In the fourth quarter, HP held its lead by shipping more than 5 million notebooks worldwide. Dell and Toshiba actually saw their shipments drop in the fourth quarter by about 1% each. For 2006, Dell saw its notebook shipments increase about 4% compared to the fourth quarter of 2005, while Toshiba"s increased nearly 18%. Overall, the notebook market increased 15.7% in the fourth quarter. For the year, notebook shipments increased by 28% to 79.6 million units in 2006 from 62 million in 2005. "Looking at the Top 5 PC OEMs, they are definitely separated into the major and minor leagues, with Hewlett-Packard and Dell alone in the majors. However, today"s minor leaguers could be tomorrow"s major leaguers. Thus, current market-share developments for the Asia/Pacific mobile-PC OEMs could give us a glimpse into the future of top-tier competition in the market," Wilkins wrote in the report.