Acer Expects Netbook Market to Reach 30 Million Units in 2009

With the global market for small-sized, lightweight portable computer systems continuing to grow, leading netbook maker Acer is expecting that the market will reach 25-30 million units this year, while in 2010, shipments of 40-45 million units are estimated, according to a recent news-article published on Digitimes, citing Scott Lin, president of Acer Taiwan. The company, which is reported to have shipped the highest number of netbooks, last year, is expecting to further increase its market share, with the help of its recently announced 10-inch Aspire One, as well as some of its upcoming models.

Scott Lin said that Acer was not planning to push the form factor over the 10-inch panel, keeping the system into a lightweight form factor, enabling the netbook to come to the market for an affordable price tag. However, Lin noted that netbooks had already impacted the market for 12-inch notebooks, one of the reasons why the company was not considering to launch netbooks with screen sizes over that of 10-inch.

 

Apparently, Acer is expecting to ship between 7,000-8,000 units of its Aspire One netbooks per month in Taiwan, alone, with high hopes on the company's recently released 10.1-inch model. Acer will continue to sell its 8.9-inch Aspire One netbooks with plans for pricing and specification adjustments slated for the end of February or the beginning of March. In addition, Acer announced that it was aiming for a market share of 40-50%.

 

Acer is one of the first PC makers to introduce a netbook to the market. The initial 8.9-inch Aspire One, based on Intel's Atom N270 processor, succeeded in getting everybody's attention, which enabled the company to record the highest number of netbook shipments last year, consequently topping its main competitor, netbook pioneer ASUS. The maker could be introducing more products based on the Atom processor in the near future.