Acer slips in global PC shipments despite record quarter for the industry

Apple and tablet vendors bite into Acer's consumer market

Acer suffered a very poor fourth quarter in the PC market, logging a 20 per cent year-on-year fall in units shipped despite overall shipments seeing a bumper end to the year.

Global PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010 broke the previous record of 88.9 million units set two years ago, with shipments of 93.1 million.

The strong sales were down to corporate demand for desktop systems, while consumer demand was more sluggish.

"With its record performance during the last three months of 2010, the worldwide PC business took another step toward becoming a market generating 100 million units per quarter," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS iSuppli.

But Acer's shipments fell by 19.6 per cent in the last quarter as competition from Apple and other tablet manufacturers depressed sales for netbooks, which were behind much of Acer's recent growth.

Acer's shipments grew eight per cent overall for the year, the poorest performance in the market.

"A little more than one year after a prolonged decline in shipments caused Dell to lose its customary second-place ranking to Acer, Dell now seems to have regained a firm hold on the number-two position," said Wilkins.

"Acer in the third quarter of 2009 had surged to the number-two spot on the strength of its strong sales of netbook PCs to consumers and a generally buoyant consumer market.

"However, with momentum for consumer PCs waning and in light of growing competition from media tablets, Acer's gains have been reversed."

Dell's shipments were flat for the fourth quarter, while Toshiba showed the fastest growth at 16.5 per cent, and market leader HP consolidated its position with 13.6 per cent.

IHS iSuppli's preliminary data on PC shipment market share for 2010 indicates that HP leads with 18.8 per cent, ahead of Dell on 12.7 per cent and Acer at 12 per cent.

However, the biggest winners were Lenovo and Toshiba, which saw shipments grow 36.8 and 22.8 per cent respectively.