Acer eclipses Dell for #2 spot in global PC shipments, says iSuppli data

At the rate at which Acer (which now also includes Gateway, Packard Bell, and e-Machines) was catching up with Dell, analysts predicted at this time last year that it could conceivably top Dell in units shipped worldwide by the third quarter of 2009. For once in this wacky economy, the analysts' predictions turned out to be correct: Acer is now the world's #2 PC producer in terms of units shipped, according to iSuppli.

But Acer is not catching up to Hewlett-Packard too fast, in any other regard besides placement on the list. HP's market share continues its strong rise, as the entire PC market enjoyed a nice recovery last month...and Dell shared in absolutely none of it.

Lagging server and commercial PC sales continued to take a toll on Dell's market share, which gave back a full point of market share, leaving 12.9% remaining as unit shipments fell 5.9% annually. Dell ended up shipping 650,000 fewer units in Q3 2009 as it did the prior year; and up to this point, the company has been blaming the sour economy for its continued declines.

But for everyone else, the sour economy has passed them by. Acer captured 1.8 points of market share, shipping 10.7 million units worldwide -- more than 1.5 million more than at the same time last year. HP shipped a million more units this last quarter than last year, and very nearly captured the unprecedented 20% mark in global market share -- the figure now is 19.901%.

The other four of the world's top five non-Dell brands are largely responsible for the entire PC market recovery. As a whole, total industry shipments rose by only 1%. And brand-name notebook PCs are the reason for the bottoming out, with shipments in that technology segment rising 17% annually. Market share for the "everyone else" segment slipped by 7.1% -- and with regard to worldwide sales, that points to continued bad news for Sony.

If you've been getting three or four different Lenovo ads in your inbox every day...well, someone can tell Lenovo the campaign's evidently working pretty well. The #4 PC maker also shipped one million more units -- its 17.2% annual growth rate puts Lenovo now on a par with HP in terms of capturing new customers. It shipped 6.9 million units last quarter, while #5 Toshiba held onto its slot, selling just over 4 million units and capturing four tenths of a point in market share.