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No. 1 in Netbooks? Not Asus but Acer

Acer takes top spot in Netbooks sold.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
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Matt Elliott

Asus created the Netbook category a little over a year ago when it introduced its first Eee PC. Acer jumped in this past summer with the Aspire One and has overtaken Asus for the top spot in the Netbook market. According to research firm DisplaySearch, Acer sold 2.15 million Netbooks in Q3 for a 38.3 percent share of the Netbook market. Asus moved 1.7 million units for 30.3 percent market share. Not only did Asus have a head start in this horse race, but it also has a much larger stable of Netbooks. It seemingly releases a new Eee PC model every other week, while Acer has but a few versions and colors of its 8.9-inch Aspire One.

HP sits in a distant third with a 5.8 percent share of the market, followed by MSI (5.7 percent), and Dell (2.8 percent).

On the whole, the Netbook category grew 160 percent in Q3, which is good news, given the current state of the global economy, but not all that surprising when you consider that the category has gained momentum with many of the big names jumping into the fray.

DisplaySearch