14 DAY TRIAL // Acer focused on the low-cost mobile PC sector in 2009 and, along with the rapid popularity surge of netbooks, its sales grew enough that it took the number-two position as leading PC supplier in the third and second quarters of last year. This led market analysts to believe that Acer had managed to take the second place away from Dell. Most recently, however, iSupply has found that the Taiwanese personal-computer supplier just barely failed to achieve this goal.
The best-selling PC brand of 2009 was HP, which managed to ship 59,620,000 units. Acer was initially assumed to have overcome Dell's performance, but its 38,485,000 sold computers just barely lost to Dell's 38,959,000 PCs.
This was a lucky break for the latter, especially considering that its sales actually fell 9.9% compared to 2008. Acer, on the other hand, instead of falling, increased by no less than 21% compared to the same period. If the companies' performance keeps going in the same direction, it is only a matter of time before Acer genuinely grabs the silver medal.
"Acer's 2009 success was driven by the notebook PC market," Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms research, said for iSuppli. "Notebooks accounted for nearly 80 percent of Acer's shipments in 2009. This allowed the company to capitalize on the fast-growing mobile-computing segment while limiting its exposure to the moribund desktop segment."
"Acer owes its strong notebook success to the fact that it is covering the key bases well, with a strong portfolio encompassing both regular laptops and netbooks," Wilkins added.
Acer managed to achieve this growth not just because of the good performance of netbooks, but also because it somehow managed to limit its losses on the desktop front, where its shipments stayed flat, even while the overall market fell 15%. Acer is, thus, at the top amongst the top 5 PC suppliers when it comes to shipment growth.