Acer leapfrogs Dell in PC maker standings

Acer has performed well in the laptop and netbook sectors

Taiwanese vendor Acer has knocked Dell from its second place slot in the world's PC manufacturer rankings.

The winner is computing giant HP, which has been at the front of the pack for some years now.

Dell, once the world's top seller of personal computers, fell from second to third place in the global PC market after Acer's sales boomed.

Figures from Gartner and IDC reveal that Dell was the only PC maker that saw shipments drop in the third quarter from a year earlier.

The company's big problems are that most of its sales have always been in the US, where demand plummeted about this time last year, and it has not been able to reach consumer laptop shoppers. More than 80 per cent of Dell's customers are businesses, and they are not buying yet.

Acer and HP sell in all regional markets, however, and have also done better at peddling products to increasingly confident consumers.

Acer has been doing extremely well. Shipments surged 25.6 per cent last quarter, the fastest growth among the top PC makers. Most of the sales have been cheap and cheerful netbooks.