Acer wrestles its way into the top 3 of notebook makers

El Segundo (CA) - While HP has managed to surpass the overall PC as well as notebook shipments of a struggling Dell, Acer has managed to surpass Toshiba in the notebook market and now ranks as the third largest notebook vendor worldwide - selling almost as many notebooks as Dell.

According to a report released by iSuppli, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has become the dominant notebook vendor in Q4 of last year. The company was able to sell 5.0 million notebooks during the Christmas season and accounted for 21.4% of all notebooks sold during that time frame.

Dell which is trying to regain its grip in the market came in second with 3.5 million notebooks and a 14.9% market share, followed closely by Acer with 3.4 million notebooks and 14.3% share. The top 5 is rounded out by Toshiba with 2.4 million and Lenovo with 1.9 million sold systems.

All five vendors are showing a clear trend towards pushing the increasingly popular notebook segment. While the companies account for only 49% of all global PC sales, they hold a combined 78.4% share of the notebook segment.

Of the top 5 companies, Dell currently has the weakest notebook share, with 36.5% of its shipments being notebooks. In comparison, 43.1% of HP PCs were notebooks in Q4. 77.2% of Acer’s shipped PCs were notebooks ; Lenovo’s notebook share was 39.6%, Toshiba’s 100%. The average share for all other PC vendors was 21.6%.