Acer usurped Asus in the netbook market

According to market research firm DisplaySearch, in the third quarter of 2008, Acer was the most netbook seller in the world market, formally usurping Asus' number one.

Although only one netbook model is available, the Aspire One, the market share that Acer earned in this market segment in the third quarter of the year reached 38.3%. Meanwhile, fellow competitor Asus has only gained 30.3% market share, despite launching a series of models branded Eee PC with different screen sizes and configurations.

The Acer Aspire One alone beat the Asus Eee PC 'family' in the third quarter of 2008.Photo: Laptoping .

According to DisplaySearch, 2.15 million units of the Aspire One were sold by Acer in July, August and September, while the total Eee PC sales were only 1.7 million.

Behind two Taiwanese computer firms, HP with the Mini-Note 2133. In the third quarter of 2008, the world's largest PC manufacturer shipped 330,000 netbooks, accounting for 5.8% of the market. Ranked respectively in 4th and 5th positions are MSI (with 5.7% market share) and Dell (2.8%). MSI sold 320,000 Wind units, while there were 160,000 Dell Mini 9s sold.

Due to the new netbook market, the sales of two other major manufacturers, Lenovo and Toshiba, are still modest. Lenovo has only sold 40,000 IdeaPad S9 and S10, while Toshiba has only sold 30,000 NB100 units.

In total, there were 5.61 million netbooks sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 160% compared to the second quarter. DisplaySearch predicts that the total number of netbooks shipped this year may reach 14 million.