Austin (TX) – Thanks to the notebook, the PC market remains brisk and virtually all big manufacturers are taking advantage of this trend. Growth rates are deep in the double digits and the market is reorganizing itself: HP dominates and Acer has surpassed Dell to become the world’s second largest vendor.

The news, based on a Q4 2007 market estimate published by DisplaySearch, may not go down well with once has been the leading PC manufacturer. A unit growth of 32% year over year, which means that Dell shipped more than 4.6 million notebooks in the fourth quarter, was not enough to hold on to position #2 in the ranking. Even worse, the gap to HP is wider than ever before.

HP saw its notebook shipments climb 42% to 6.7 million units in Q4. Acer grew by 32% and was estimated at about 5.3 million units. In fairness, it needs to be noted that Acer’s shipments now include Gateway PCs, which were high enough to enable Acer to comfortably pass Dell’s Q4 shipments.  Following Dell in #3 are Toshiba (+24% to 2.86 million units), Lenovo (+38% to 2.73 million), Fujitsu-Siemens (+30% to 1.62 million), Sony (+35% to 1.59 million) and Asus (+50% to 1.56 million).

Apple is listed at #8 with a Q4 gain of 38% to 1.34 million notebooks. It is interesting to note that DisplaySearch estimates Apple’s market share in the notebook segment at 4.1%, which is significantly higher than Apple’s estimated share of 2.9% in the PC market overall.

If positioning in the notebook market is any indication for a PC manufacturer’s future growth opportunity in this PC market, then Apple should continue to do well. Unfortunately, DisplaySearch did not provide a market estimate for the PC market as a whole, but if we assume that iSuppli’s PC market estimate is even remotely comparable to DisplaySearch’ numbers, it becomes apparent that the current PC market is separated by vendors who either align themselves with the current market requirements and those who are betting on the notebook as growth driver.

Putting the DisplaySearch and iSuppli numbers next to each other, it appears that notebooks how hold about 43% of the overall global PC market. HP, Dell and Lenovo shipments are very close to this level, with estimated notebook shares of 46%, 41% and 47%, respectively. Acer, Apple and Toshiba appear to be far away from such a balanced share and are apparently focusing on the notebook: 73% of shipped Acer PCs, 61% of Apple PCs and 93% of Toshiba systems were notebooks in the fourth quarter of last year.   

mispelled again

Mar 06, 2008 14:52     

tell my how does how work in this sentence. ".. it appears that notebooks how hold about 43% of the overall global PC market."
Uadrive report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

re: mispelled (sic) again

Mar 06, 2008 17:57     

I love it how you have two spelling/grammar errors in your comment about a typo in the article. It is "misspelled" not "mispelled" and you should have had "tell me how" not "tell my how".
not Uadrive report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

third is not bad

Mar 07, 2008 09:02     

Considereing the number of notebook computers, third is not bad. It is still alof of computers being sold.
TomLeeM/BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

The market finally sees what I did five years ago!

Mar 11, 2008 20:51     

Five years ago I stated that what was then making Dell the juggernaut in the industry would also become it's downfall: building computers based solely on a build-to-order system, using expensive US labour, would come back to bite them in the ass. I predicted alliances between companies like HP and Asus, whereby the market could be flooded with any imaginable configuration using a good quality set of equipment - but primarily built in simple configurations that appealed to most. Using cheap Asian labour, and quick delivery schedules to anywhere in the world would allow the economies of scale to drive prices down while not sacrificing quality. Now the market recognizes that fact - Dell is using the cheapest equipment they can buy (Chaintech motherboards and Lite-on DVD drives are spotlight examples of lowest-bidder mentality), while taking the hit in reliability. Remember when a Dell computer had a motherboard built by Intel, an optical drive from Pioneer, and a power supply big enough to allow you to actually put in a new video card? Those days are gone, and along with them the reliability Dell's name once had in the industry. They used to have a good product and a wicked price. Now it's a mediocre (at best) quality, and a wicked headache trying to get anything serviced. The fact that Acer can outsell Dell should alone be enough to tell people that Dell has nothing left but price, and even that isn't enough to keep them aloft in the market. And seeing Asus - always a solid white box performer with manufacturing contracts to almost every tier 1 company - rise to sell 1/3 as many notebooks as Dell truly puts it into perspective. Michael Dell built his company with the goal to be "bigger than IBM". And once he achieved that goal, I think he lacked the direction to take the company any further. Shareholders will want his head on a platter soon, and without a major change in their floundering in the market we will see his head rolling off the stage and the once unstoppable company he built become a takeover target.

Pinchy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0