Acer is tops in Europe, but Asus is growing fast

Gartner has just released provisional numbers for PC sales in Western Europe in the third quarter, and Taiwan's Acer has emerged as the biggest supplier, in terms of units. Asus, also from Taiwan, also did well. The European market grew by an impressive 24.3% to 17.2 million units, thanks to the popularity of cheap netbooks. The success of the Acer Aspire One helped Acer increase its shipments by 64.3% to 4.3 million units, giving it 25% of the market. Asus's shipments jumped 195.5% to 1.1 million units, putting it in fourth place, behind Hewlett-Packard (3.5m units) and Dell (2.0m units). Of course, since netbooks cost around £150-£300, the picture would be far less rosy in value terms. Indeed, given the decline in notebook PC prices -- you can now get Windows Vista notebooks for £250 -- some suppliers may be shipping more for less. Dell held on to the top spot in the UK market , shipping 708,000 units for a 20.6% market share. Acer increased its shipments by 60.9% to 651,000 units (18.9%) to take second place from Hewlett-Packard (18.7%), which saw shipments fall by 8.2%. Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal says in the press release: "The roll-out of mini-notebooks has masked the weakness in the UK PC market. The demand in the professional market slowed down and vendors' margins continued to shrink as average selling prices fell by double digits again." In France , Acer led the way with 786,000 units shipped for a 27.6% market share. Asus was fourth, with shipments growing by 150.4% to 192,000. Toshiba was fifth. Acer also topped the list for Germany , with shipments up 91.8% to 702,000 units for a 20.9% market share.

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Acer is tops in Europe, but Asus is growing fast

Sony recalls another 100,000 laptop batteries

Sony has recalled more laptop batteries that may be a potential fire hazard, but this time it's a small one: only 100,000 batteries, compared to the 9.6 million recalled in 2006. According to Reuters : The recall affects around 74,000 notebook PCs sold by HP and 14,400 from Toshiba. The faulty batteries are also used in laptop PCs from Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd, Sony said

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Sony recalls another 100,000 laptop batteries