DisplaySearch has released their latest report for notebook market share in Q2 2008. Dell continued to rule the North American market with 21.9% market share closely followed by HP with 21.4%. Both companies saw slight increase in year-over-year market share. In comparison Acer the third ranked company saw a drop of 4.2% in year-over-year market share. Acer’s market share went from 18.6% to 14.4% even though it bought Gateway this year. The fourth company on the list Apple rose from 6.6% to 10.6%, displacing last year’s fourth ranked Toshiba to fifth place. The year-over-year surge in market share for Apple was the largest jump for any of the top five companies. If Apple continues at this pace Acer is within striking distance for Apple.
In rest of the world HP continued to top notebook market share for 8th straight quarter. HP market share increased from 18.9% last year to 20.5% this year. Here also Acer, though it was ranked second, saw a drop from 20.9% in Q2 2007 to 17.9% in Q2 2008. Acer bought Gateway and Packard Bell to keep its market share high even though both Gateway and Packard were seeing drop in their market share for past two years. The data clearly shows that Acer might have been able to prevent competitors from getting more of a foothold in rapidly growing notebook market initially, but the acquisition has failed to reverse or even halt that trend. Dell was in the third place with 12.5% market share followed by Toshiba with 11.7% market share and Asus with 5.5% market share. The growth in notebook market came mostly from 13.3” to 16.0” size category.  The desktop replacement and the ultraportable market share continued to shrink.