ArchiveOriginally published 2009

Acer in 2009: Overtaking Dell and the Budget Notebooks That Did It

In late 2009 this site reported that Acer had overtaken Dell as the second-largest PC maker in the world. The same months brought a run of posts on the budget Acer notebooks doing the work: the Aspire 5517, the Aspire 5542, the Extensa 5635Z. Here is why that mattered and how the league table moved afterward.

How Acer got to second

The 2008 recession hit business PC purchasing hard, and Dell, which sold mostly to businesses through direct orders, felt it more than anyone. Acer sold mostly to consumers through retail shelves and had bet heavily on two products the recession favoured: netbooks, which Acer sold in enormous numbers, and 15.6 inch notebooks priced under 500 dollars with just enough specification to feel like a real computer. Shipment figures from the main research firms showed Acer passing Dell in the third quarter of 2009, and this site's post reported the milestone. It was the high point of the netbook era in corporate terms.

The notebooks that did it

The reviews on this site were fair rather than glowing: the machines were slow at anything demanding, the screens were dim with narrow viewing angles, and the plastics creaked. They were also astonishingly cheap for what they did, and for a family that needed a computer for homework, email and video, they were the sensible buy. That is the whole story of Acer's 2009: not better laptops, but adequate laptops at prices nobody else matched.

What happened next

The netbook collapse from 2011 hurt Acer more than any other maker because it had leaned on the category hardest. Tablets took the low-end consumer buyer, business spending returned and lifted Dell, and Lenovo, growing fast in China and through acquisitions, moved past everyone to take first place in 2013. Acer slipped to fourth and then further as the market consolidated, spent several years restructuring, and re-emerged as a strong player in gaming laptops, Chromebooks and low-cost machines for education. It remains one of the six largest PC makers, but the 2009 second place was a peak it did not return to.

Reading the league table

• Unit share rewards volume at the low end; it says little about profit. Acer's second place came with thin margins.
• Rankings swing with who is buying. Consumer booms lift retail brands; business recoveries lift direct sellers.
• The maker who owns the category that is about to shrink looks strongest right before it does. Netbooks in 2009 are the example.