14 DAY TRIAL // When first released, the Aspire One from Acer was strongly believed to be the best alternative to ASUS' 8.9-inch Eee PC offering. Over the past months, not much has been said about Acer's netbook, if compared with all the headlines that have been taken by ASUS' vast lineup of ultra-portable Eee PC netbooks.
However, it appears that customers are more attracted to a product that probably needs no advertising, or at least not so much as the Eee PC from ASUS. On that note, Acer, the world's third largest PC vendor, has just announced its impressive Q3 market results, and even more impressive and ambitious plans for the upcoming year.
Apparently, the company plans to take about 40-50% market share in the world of netbooks, thus seriously posing itself as a threat to ASUS' own 50% netbook market share expectations. Gianfranco Lanci, Acer's president, says that the company has shipped around 2.4 million units in the third quarter and that demand is rising on the US market, which brings Acer closer to its goal of shipping 5-6 million units of its highly successful Aspire One netbook in the year 2008. Mr. Lanci also estimates that, in 2009, the global netbook market will expand to approximately 30-35 million units, half of which will be provided by his company.
Despite the fact that Acer has just the One netbook to fight off the vast family of ASUS Eee PCs, the company's product appears to be performing very well. One of the reasons might just be the fact that Aspire One is known for its better price tag and design, which enables it to claim the number one spot in Amazon.com's list of bestselling items in Computers and PC hardware.
Acer's chairman, JT Wang, also announced that the company was targeting a goal of 36-39 million units for 2009, with notebook shipments likely to register a selling growth rate of 25-35%.