Stan Beer
Friday, 17 October 2008 17:42
IT Industry -
Market
Page 1 of 2
Netbook sales in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) have literally exploded in the third quarter of 2008, making Acer the top ranking PC vendor for the first time ever, while propelling Asus up the ladder into fourth place. IDC figures show that growth in notebooks overall has been strong, but the take-up of netbooks has been staggering.
According to IDC, sales of netbooks
(mini-notebooks) were largely responsible for Acer's breath-taking rise
to top spot, which saw the Taiwanese vendor almost double its number of
units shipped compared to 3Q07. While sales of its desktop and
traditional notbook products were strong, IDC pointed to Acer's massive
push of Aspire One netbook as contributing to its soaring volume.
Likewise, the phenomenal success of Asus Eee PC range, was singled out
as the catalyst driving the vendor, which like Acer is based in Taiwan,
into the ranks of elite players in the PC space. Asus grew its units by
a massive 156% compared to Q307, shipping more than 2 million units for
the quarter.
Notebook-only vendor Toshiba also did very well, recording more than
40% growth over the previous corresponding quarter and demonstrating
the continuing strength of the traditional notebook sector.
Driven by continued buoyancy in the notebook market and the additional
momentum created by the new netbook segment, PC shipments recorded a
robust 27% increase in EMEA in 3Q08 compared with the same quarter last
year, according to IDC.
Notebooks bucked the gloomy economic climate and continued to drive
overall market growth at over 52% year on year as consumer demand
showed no sign of slowing down in Western Europe and continued to grow
in CEE and MEA, while the market also benefited from sustained demand
in the business space.
"This quarter benefited not only from continued and robust consumer
demand for mainstream notebooks as anticipated, but also from an
acceleration and confirmation of the uptake of the new 'Mini Notebook'
segment with the proliferation of low-cost ultra portable products and
deals through telco operators which contributed to boost consumer
demand further," said Karine Paoli, associate vice president for IDC's
EMEA Personal Computing research.
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