Acer Shows Strongest Shipment Growth Among PC Makers

Online staff -- Electronic News, 2/10/2005

Thanks to its direct channel business model that allowed it increase efficiency, while getting closer to its customers, Acer of Taiwan stood out from the competition with the strongest shipment growth among the top 10 PC manufacturers in 2004, according to iSuppli Corp.

Acer outstripped worldwide PC market growth by more than a factor of three in 2004 as global PC shipments increased by 13.4 percent to reach 191.4 million units in 2004, up from 168.8 million in 2003, the El Segundo, Calif.-based market research firm reported.

Acer's PC sales rose to 6.4 million units in 2004, up 44 percent from 4.5 million in 2003. This rapid growth propelled Acer up one spot in the worldwide PC market share rankings, passing Japan's Toshiba Corp. to take fifth place. Acer accounted for 3.4 percent of worldwide PC shipments in 2004, up from 2.6 percent in 2003.

The next-largest growth rate was achieved by top shipper Dell Inc., whose unit shipments rose by 22.8 percent in 2004, about half the rate of increase posted by Acer, to 25.6 million units.

Lenovo of China also improved its market position, rising one rank to pass NEC of Japan and take seventh place in 2004. The company, which has been in the news recently because of its planned acquisition (http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA486252) of IBM's PC business, shipped 4.3 million PCs in 2004, up 14.9 percent from 3.8 million in 2003.

U.S.-based PC maker Gateway Inc. broke into the top 10 ranks at number nine in 2004. Gateway's acquisition of rival PC maker eMachines helped the company expand its revenue and enter the top 10 ranking.

The top-four players remained unchanged in 2004.

U.S.-based Dell held on to the top rank, having grown its shipments to 31.4 million units in 2004. This helped Dell to pad its lead, with its market share increasing by 1.2 percentage points from 2003 to reach a share of 16.4 percent in 2004.

Hewlett-Packard Co., also of the United States, remained in second place, having grown its unit shipments by 10.6 percent to 27.7 million, resulting in a 0.4 of a percentage point decline in its market share. In third place, U.S.-based IBM generated 16.8 percent growth, which resulted in a 0.1 of a percentage point increase in share. Fourth-place European PC maker Fujitsu Siemens increased its unit shipments by 12.4 percent and lost 0.1 of a percentage point of share.

In the bottom five, only Apple Computer Inc. of the United States retained the same ranking as it did in 2003, remaining in 10th place with 13.2 percent unit growth. Apple's market share remained unchanged at 1.8 percent.

Notebook PCs continued to outgrow all other form factors in 2004 with a 22.1 percent rise in unit shipments. This expanded the notebooks' share of all PCs shipped to 24 percent.

Entry-level servers also achieved excellent growth of 19 percent, raising their share of the total units to 2.8 percent. Meanwhile, desktop PC shipments grew 10.6 percent and dropped to 73.3 percent of units.

This trend of laptop shipments rising at a faster rate than desktops or entry-level servers will continue over the next few years, iSuppli predicts. However, the growth gap will close somewhat as the corporate market for mobile computers reaches the saturation point.

Looking at the impact of these results on the PC forecast, iSuppli believes that growth will slow down in 2005 as the corporate Y2K bubble cycle comes to an end and the market settles down to a more normal replacement rate.

iSuppli maintained its overall PC unit growth forecast for 2005 at 8.2 percent and anticipates a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent from 2004 to 2009.