Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s No. 2 PC brand, saw its share in the global PC market slide marginally in the fourth quarter amid iPad cannibalization and heavy snowstorms in Europe.
According to preliminary figures issued by Gartner Inc yesterday, Acer’s global share declined by 0.6 percentage points to 12.7 percent in the fourth quarter, from 13.3 percent in the corresponding period of 2009.
“Acer faced challenges in the fourth quarter due to a slowdown in the overall consumer mobile PC market,” the researcher said.
It said Acer was also hit by weakening demand for mini--notebooks, or netbooks, as Apple Inc’s iPad grabbed consumer wallets after being introduced in the second quarter.
Gartner also said Acer, which has a lower presence in the corporate PC segment, failed to -benefit from rising PC replacement demand among enterprises.
Acer last week said snowstorms in Europe that made many consumers unwilling to leave their homes had dragged down its PC shipments and therefore it wouldn’t be able to meet its fourth-quarter sales target.
Overall, the Taiwanese PC brand commanded a 12.9 percent share of the market for the whole of last year, the same share from a year earlier.
Its total shipments, however, climbed 13.8 percent to 45.3 million units, the researcher said.
Hewlett-Packard Co, the No. 1 PC maker, saw its market share drop to 17.9 percent from 19.1 percent.
Its shipments rose 6.5 percent to 62.8 million.
Dell Inc was the No. 3 maker with a 12 percent share. Its shipments climbed 12.8 percent to 42.1 million units.
Chinese rival Lenovo Group (聯想) was the fourth-largest, seizing a 9.7 percent share last year, up from 8 percent a year ago.
Lenovo’s shipments advanced 37.3 percent to 34 million units.
According to Garner’s statistics, worldwide PC shipments totaled 350.9 million units last year, up 13.8 percent from 2009.
This growth rate was an improvement from 2009, when PC shipments increased only 5.5 percent, it said.
Separately, Acer yesterday said it would become an official partner with Italian motorcycle company Ducati Corse for two years.
Acer will supply a slew of hardware, including its Gateway-branded servers, to Ducati Corse to design motor engines and support future racing events in terms of data analysis, the statement said.
The feasibility of coming up with Acer PC products bearing the “Ducati Corse” logo is currently being studied, it said.
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