Netbook explosion takes Acer to number 1, Asus to number 4 in EMEA

By Stan Beer
Friday, 17 October 2008 16:42

Market

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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