Acer loses world's No. 3 notebook-maker spot in Q4

Want China Times, CNA 2013-01-14

An Acer laptop at a store in Taipei. (Photo/Wang Chueh-wei)

Taiwan's Acer lost it's world No. 3 title with a 10% global market share to Dell in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to local research firm Digitimes Research.

Acer shipments dropped by more than 15% annually in the fourth quarter of last year due to rising inventory levels, leading to the loss of the spot to the US rival, the Taipei-based firm said.

In fifth place was Taiwan's Asustek Computer, behind Acer by only 0.2 percentage points, the firm noted in a statement released on Jan. 11.

China's Lenovo Group, on the other hand, shipped a record high in the company's history of 8 million notebook computers in the fourth quarter due to strong overseas market performance, but it did not beat Hewlett-Packard to the world's No. 1 position, given HP's steady performance over the last two quarters, the Taiwanese research firm explained.

Global notebook computer shipments reached 48.51 million devices in the fourth quarter of 2012, an increase of 2.5% from the third quarter, because of Windows 7 sales at year-end, it said. The figure is better than its estimated 0.7% increase, it added.

Global shipments in 2012, however, reached only 194 million devices, posting a negative 4.5% year-on-year growth, according to the firm.

Meanwhile, global shipments of personal computers for 2012 fell 3.2% to 352.42 million devices from a year earlier as smartphones and tablet computers stole the market spotlight, market information advisory firm International Data Corp. said on Jan. 11.

Acer was the fourth-largest PC vendor worldwide with 33.49 million global shipments of PC devices, while Asustek finished in fifth place with 24.13 million devices.

HP remained the world's largest PC vendor in 2012, shipping 58.13 million devices, while Lenovo ranked as the second-largest PC vendor last year, shipping 52.45 million devices.

Dell was third, with 38.72 million devices.