Acer clings onto PC market top spot

Rise in demand for tablet PCs is fuelling the market despite drop in netbook sales, IDC claims

Eszter Morvay: Media tablets are accelerating the growth trend

Acer has clung onto its top spot in the EMEA PC market despite fierce rivalry from HP, according to IDC’s latest figures.

Covering the third quarter of 2010, the analyst reported positive trends for the back-to-school season, but with "softer" growth than the double digits recorded in the first half of the year.

Mini-notebook performance was particularly weak, IDC noted, with a 25 per cent drop in shipment levels, as the rise of the tablet PC continued.

On the business side, IDC reported positive growth, but pointed out the bulk of renewal activity is expected for next year, while continued economic uncertainty caused SMBs to remain cautious and see out the fiscal year before thinking about investment.

The top five vendors were Acer with 21.6 per cent of the market in Q3, closely followed by HP with 19.2 per cent market share. Dell was third with 9.2 per cent of the market and Asus was in fourth place with 8.5 per cent market share. Lenovo rounded off the top five with 5.9 per cent share.

But in terms of growth Lenovo was the top performer for the quarter, seeing 61.1 per cent growth. Asus was the next best performer with 26.8 per cent growth, with Dell recording 12.2 per cent growth. Acer and HP saw growth of 3.4 and 5.6 per cent respectively.

Eszter Morvay, research manager IDC EMEA PC Tracker, said: “Mainstream notebook renewals in the consumer space remained positive, with most countries in Western Europe recording double-digit growth in the back-to-school season, but high sell in levels in Q2 and less-attractive price points, combined with the accelerated contraction of netbook shipments, led to softer consumer growth in Q3.

She added: “Mini notebooks had started to slow down in the first half of 2010, but increasing noise and announcements around Media Tablets have contributed to accelerating the trend, and also impacted notebook renewal intentions from a share-of-wallet standpoint. Some users already purchased an iPad, and many others adopted a wait-and-see position as more products develop towards Christmas.”