Notebooks ship more than desktops for the first time

“The big news from iSuppli's market share data for the third quarter was undoubtedly the performance of Taiwan’s Acer Inc.,” Wilkins said. “On a sequential basis, the company grew its unit shipment market share by 45 percent, and by 79 percent on a year-over-year basis. Acer shipped almost 3 million more notebooks in the third quarter than it did in the preceding quarter, with the majority of those 3 million being the company's netbook products. Clearly, the company's netbook strategy is paying dividends, with Acer now trailing Dell by less than 2 percentage points of market share for all PCs.”

Solid PC performance

iSuppli was encouraged by overall third-quarter PC shipments, which exceeded our prior expectations of 12 percent year-over-year growth for the third quarter. Desktop PC shipment levels declined by 1.3 percent compared to the same period in 2007, while notebook shipments were up almost 40 percent. Looking outside of the Top-5 OEMs, Apple lost almost half a point of market share on a sequential basis at 3.2 percent, placing it seventh overall in total PC shipments. ASUSTeK Computer Inc. reported a great performance with its notebook shipments, surpassing Lenovo to become the fifth-largest notebook PC OEM while retaining its position overall as the sixth-ranked PC OEM in terms of total PC shipments.

2008 outlook

In view of the better-than-expected third-quarter PC shipments, iSuppli has slightly increased its full year 2008 unit growth forecast from 12.5 percent to 13.0 percent. Our revised 2009 outlook calls for PC unit growth of 4.3 percent.