Acer beats Dell as World's No. 2 PC brand in 2009
After years of hard work on boosting global sales, Acer Inc., a Taiwan-based, world-caliber PC brand, has commanded a 13% share of the global market for PCs and formally unseated Dell, which posted a 12.2%, as No. 2 PC brand in the world in 2009, according to statistics compiled by Gartner.
With market demand simmering in Asia, the U.S., Japan, Latin America and Europe, global shipment of PCs rebounded in the fourth quarter of 2009 by 22% from a year earlier to more than 90 million units, bringing the total to 305 million units for the entire year. Notable is that fourth-quarter sales in the Chinese PC market sharply soared by 60% quarterly, due partly to strong consumer demand and partly to the government's policies to promote use of household appliances and electronics in rural areas of China, Gartner's report shows.
HP shipped a total of 58.94 million PCs in 2009, including 17.79 million units in the fourth quarter, leading the global PC market with a 19.3% share. Acer came second with annual shipment of 39.89 million PCs including 12.18 million units for the fourth quarter, commanding a 13% global market share, up three percentage points from 2008.
In fact, four of world's top five PC brands all enjoyed strong shipment growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 from the third quarter, with HP posting a 42.2% growth rate, Acer 41.5%, Lenovo 42.2% and Toshiba 31.2%. In contrast, Dell reported a comparatively low growth rate of only 5.7%, due mainly to sluggish demand in the enterprise segment, Gartner explains.
