HP, Acer beat up on Dell in Q3 PC rankings

by Dan Nystedt

November 30, 2007 —

HP expanded its lead over Dell in the overall PC market during the third quarter,
while Acer snatched the number two spot from Dell in notebooks, market researcher
iSuppli said Thursday.

HP's market share rose to 19.2 percent as it widened its lead over second place
Dell, which held a 14.6 percent share, iSuppli reported in preliminary figures.
It's a remarkable difference from the same time last year, when HP first captured
the top spot from Dell with a 16.5 percent market share, versus 16.3 percent.

Dell has suffered from a host of troubles over the past two years, including
financial restatements and leadership changes. But its main problem has been
a failure to grow as fast as rivals despite strong global PC market growth.
The company's quarterly earnings conference Thursday highlighted this issue.
Despite strong revenue growth, rising costs cut into profits and the
company warned that future earnings could be hurt by cautious PC buying
among financial customers.

Dell's stock fell 9.9 percent, or US$2.78, to end at $25.36 in after-market
stock trading Thursday after the report.

Rivals have taken advantage of its troubles.

HP has surged under fresh leadership from CEO
Mark Hurd. The company's third quarter PC shipments grew 32.7 percent compared
to last year to 13.1 million units, iSuppli said. Dell's increased just 1.5
percent to 9.9 million.

Acer added to Dell's woes in the quarter, snatching away the second place global
ranking in laptop PCs on strong shipment growth. The Taiwanese company gauged
the strongest growth among all top PC vendors in the third quarter, up 68.8
percent year-on-year, mainly due to strong notebook PC sales.

The market for notebook PCs is growing far faster than desktops, and offers
far better profit margins for companies. Laptop shipments grew 33.5 percent
year-over-year in the third quarter, while desktop PC shipments grew just 3.4
percent, iSuppli said.

Acer captured a 7.9 percent share of the global PC market in the third quarter,
but the results did not include Gateway, which Acer recently acquired. Gateway
figures will be included in fourth-quarter figures, iSuppli said. The addition
of the U.S. company's sales will narrow the gap between Acer and Dell in global
rankings.

Notebook shipments should continue to boost Acer. Goldman Sachs Wednesday revised
its target for global laptop shipments up to 11 percent quarter-on-quarter growth
in the fourth quarter, compared to a previous forecast of 9 percent. The investment
banking firm also sees the potential for the best laptop shipment performance
in six-years in the first quarter of next year.

iSuppli predicts worldwide PC shipments will grow 12 percent year-over-year
in 2007.

The global PC market grew 13.8 percent year-on-year in the third quarter as
companies shipped 68.1 million PCs, iSuppli said. Chinese PC vendor Lenovo retained
its third place global ranking in the PC market in the third quarter with an
8.1 percent share, while Acer took fourth and Toshiba placed fifth at 4.3 percent.

TABLE: Global PC vendor market share in the third quarter of 2007

Vendors by ranking	Market share	PC shipments, Q3 2007	PC shipments, Q3 2006	Year-on-Year Growth
HP	19.2 percent	13.1 million	9.9 million	32.7 percent
Dell	14.6 percent	9.9 million	9.8 million	1.5 percent
Lenovo	8.1 percent	5.5 million	4.5 million	23.6 percent
Acer	7.9 percent	5.4 million	3.2 million	68.8 percent
Toshiba	4.3 percent	2.9 million	2.5 million	18.7 percent
Others	45.9 percent	31.2 million	30.1 million	3.9 percent
Total	100 percent	68.11 million	59.86 million	13.8 percent

Source: iSuppli Corp.

IDG News Service