Acer fulfills prophecy, overtakes Dell as number two PC maker worldwide (update)
By Ross Miller 
posted Oct 14th 2009 8:14PM
posted Oct 14th 2009 8:14PM
Update: Let us adjust our glasses a bit. According to the charts, Acer is number two in worldwide PC sales, not in US as this previously reported. Stateside, the company is sitting at number three at 13.9 percent, behind HP (25.7 percent) and Dell (26.2 percent). Apologies for the confusion, the person responsible for eyesight has been subsequently sacked, the person responsible for the sacking has been sacked, etc.
Acer... boo!
Others, yea!
oh wait, who are the others again?
I'll take acer over Dell anyday =)
And so are you guys now being run by 40 specially trained ecuadorian mountain llamas
Agreed. Although this is anecdotal evidence, in my experience Acer build quality is horrible as are their repairs. Of the 3 Acer laptops that I am the de facto tech support for, 2 have had to be sent back due to HDD failure, 1 has had to be sent back twice due to power cord failure, all come preloaded with tons of crapware and seem to BSOD a lot (one has an especially weird habit of occasionally not being able to find hal.dll across multiple formats). Finally the only one with an 8xxx series Geforce had to be sent back, although I don't blame this on Acer.
Of the 5 Dell Studio laptops, 3 have had media key issues, but aside from that have been problem free. Two of the two XPS's have had to be sent back due to 8xxx series Geforce issues, but once again this is nVidia's fault rather than Dell's. Surprisingly enough none of the 3 Minis ever seem to have issues.
Both of the Compaq Presarios (HP) seem to have weird USB losing connection issues, but aside from that seem to be fine. The imprinted HP Pavilion is perfectly fine and the other two Pavilions have minor issues such as the occasional heat-induced poweroff and mediocre connection issues (bad sound output and flaky VGA output) but seem to be fine aside from that.
In my experience all of the manufacturers have their own issues, however HP's and Dell's are more annoyances than serious problems, while Acer has serious functional quality control issues.
HOORAY BEER
@Mark
Out of 3 Acer laptops I've been using for over 2 years now 0 had any issues in the past. I guess you were just less lucky. Much less lucky.
Of the 1 acer I've had, it crapped out after a year and a half. Previously to that, the adaptor made a high pitched buzzing sound even when the computer was off
Of the 3 Dells I've had, none have had serious problems and they're all going on over 2 years
Pseudoshipment charts FTW!
And my favorite OEM, HP, still reigns supreme! *MANLY ROAR OF PLEASURE*
You really try to live up to your name, don't you?
Uh, that's worldwide shipments as the chart title clearly shows and not US shipments. Dell is No 2 in US according to IDC and No 1 according to Gartner.
yea and i love how they are judging it by unit sales instead of what really matters: dollars.
shipping 90% netbooks that net $5 each is total bullcrap when dell and hp are making tons of money on their high end xps laptops and desktops
horrible article, dont listen to engadget they fall into all the fud bullshit on the internet. horrible journalists
@ Annoying Poser
Damn you really are annoying. What the hell you doing then reading their articles?
That was...quick.
It felt like it was just yesterday little Acer made that grandiose claim.
Number 'tow'? I'm unfamiliar with that number.
lol you noticed too
typo
You mean number two as in their products are crap?
I posted this in the other Acer market share article, but it was already flooded by comments at the time so I'll post it again:
"Wow, I can't believe how much ignorance there is on a site like Engadget over the quality of Acer products. Check out the latest reader surveys in PCMag. You can view them for free (although you have to register). The subjective reliability rating of Acer/Gateway is just as good as Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, and better than HP (which has been tanking in recent years). Not only that, its percentage needing repair is 12%, which is lower than Lenovo (22%), Dell (23%), and HP (19%) that so I would quit perpetuating your outdated opinions. The only companies that had better reliability based on those 2 metrics are Asus. Sony, and Apple, and they are often in a difference price range.
With respect to build quality, please go to your local store to check out the laptop section of the HPs, Acers, Dells and Toshibas there. The latest few Acer laptops I checked out were cheaper, faster, and used higher quality plastics than the HPs in the same price range. I don't know what laptops you guys have been looking at lately. I just bought a gateway and the internal components are what you find in any other laptop. It also runs cool, which isn't something I can say for my last laptop that HP decided could handle a hot AMD processor fit into a tiny space."
Oh yeah, the Gateway NV series laptop I bought it was called the best budget notebook by Laptop magazine.
@Monkey with my junk on his face
Considering most of the websites, magazines, digital photos, and digital art you look at along with most of the movies, cartoons, TV shows, and podcasts you watch are being created or edited on a Mac it's kind of ironic that it actually works out that yes, they really are made for showing and telling, just not in the same way you wish they were. They're made for creative professionals to show and tell some of the greatest ideas ever to come out of the human mind and I couldn't or wouldn't want to picture the 21st century without Apple's great influence in helping to lay the creative ground work for millenniums to come.
Did you choose to reply to me because the other thread was too crowded?
This may be a stupid question, but do these figures include corporate and educational establishment shipments, or just those in the commercial sector?
#2 huh? How come I've never seen anyone with an Acer?
I only see Dell and HP... weird.
I have one.
The "number TOW" spot? Really? That exciting?
Before all the E-flaming begins, I am referring to a typo.
Sooooo Apple doesn't even make the top 5? Sorry Paul A. Chapel.
I thought that was strange too, guess they don't warrant their own line in the report.
Lies! Apple has a 99% market share in computers running OSX!
The clue is in the title: "PC maker". Last time I checked, Apple didn't make PCs.
Apple doesn't make "Personal Computers"? What do you think they make? Little plastic miracles?
@spoonman, so Macs aren't personal computers? Really?
Isn't a PC a "Personal Computer"? I'm pretty sure Macs are used as personal computers. I don't know why the term PC is synonymous with Windows.
They make the top 5 in US sales. This chart shows worldwide sales. On the read link there is another chart for the US.
Nope, Apple makes "popular computers" for show and tell.
Poor spoonman, maybe he should go back to listening to that cool new FM radio thing that Apple just invented and leave this discussion to the grownups.
Uhmm... remember the Mac vs. PC ads? Apple obviously does not consider itself as a maker of PCs ;)
@mohan
They don't consider themselves as PC makers? Really?
I just took their idiotic ads as them playing at the ignorance of the consumer that knows nothing of what they are looking at let a lone using. I find it funny when consumers look at those ads and actually believe them.
They did a great job with their ads, they worked wonderfully, but half of them aren't really telling the truth or are trying to bend it in any way that is favorable to them.
I swear that Acer Ceo must've saw that chart before he made that statement today...
Perfect way to talk shit and back it up all in one day.
I have an Acer Aspire 5515 Laptop with Vista its the worst takes like 10mins to boot up an I have to wait for a youtube to be done loading before I can watch it cause itll stutter all the way through
Can't really blame Acer, that's what you brought. (looked at the specs)
April fools already? seriously, who owns an Acer. I mean, I did, but...
This is really misleading because most of Acer's computers are dinky little netbooks with a dinky little product margin to match, whereas Dell and HP sell expensive computers with large profit margins and lots of high-profit value added services (think warranties, enterprise management, customization, etc.) What's more, people usually buy Acers from a third-party big-box retailer which sucks up some of the profit, while people buy Dells and HPs (at least Dells, not 100% sure about HP) directly from the manufacturer, which gives them more profit.
I'm not paid by any of these companies (look at my posting record and that's fairly obvious), but I just want to point out that this chart is not what it seems.
OK, so I'm in a bad mood, but really, how is the chart misleading? It never claimed to show profits or profitability, but that's what you seem to think it should be showing. I guess the chart is deficient because it failed to anticipate what you thought it should be showing.
For those info, You should be reading Quarterly Earnings charts. Which come out quarterly from manufacturers.
NETBOOKS!
How is this even possible? Acer is probably the shittiest brand of PC's that I've ever used. They have ugly notebooks and stupid netbooks. Dell is so much better than them. HP definitely is #1 though. How isn't Sony on that list? Who the hell buys Toshiba's and Lenovo's over Sony's?!
I think lenovo is on top as they're selling the ThinkPad notebooks, and those are still the mercedes of business notebooks no doubt, you find a lot of ThinkPads in business lounge of an airport...
on the other hand you find a lot of iDiots with their mac in starbucks pretending to be important. rofl..
i really like hp notebooks though, im getting the new tx2 when it comes out on the 22nd (refreshed with 45nm cpu and radeon 4200GPU)
I'll take Lenovo over Sony any day. As a matter of fact I have, twice.