According to a recent article in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, cited by Digitimes, in the third quarter of 2008, Acer has managed to steal the number one spot from HP in the global consumer notebook market. The company is reported to have shipped approximately 5.04 million portable computer systems, surpassing Hewlet-Packard's shipments of 4.85 million units. The news comes after recent rumors regarding the successful market performance of Acer's Aspire One netbook, introduced earlier this year as an alternative to ASUS' Eee PC system.

 

The reported figures are said to have been made available by research firm IDC, which also reports that, despite losing the number one spot in the consumer notebook market, the Palo Alto, California-based PC vendor managed to lead the overall global netbook market with shipments of 8.12 million units. The company was closely followed by Acer with 7.89 million units, while Dell took the third spot with shipments of 5.24 million units, according to the paper.

HP also succeeded to hold on to its leadership in the global enterprise notebook market, with shipments of 3.27 million units. The number two spot was taken by the Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, which accounted for 2.97 million units of the global shipments. Acer only shipped 2.85 million units, a figure that allowed the PC vendor to claim the third spot in the market.

 

A good part of the reported market success for Acer's portable computer systems is due to the Aspire One netbook, which managed to take a considerable part of ASUS' market share. The Aspire One, released earlier this year, was one of the first netbooks to have seriously threatened ASUS’ Eee PC position, which was the first device of its kind to provide users with an ultra-portable computer system that could easily connect to the Internet and deliver the basic computing functionalities.

 

Recently, Acer has partially unveiled its expectations for 2009, placing a big bet on its netbook lineup, as it has plans for it to account for a good 50% of the market.