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Acer has stolen the computer giant's thunder when it comes to European demand. It also stands in good company by beating the market's overall year-on-year growth with its own healthy figures alongside other smaller and newer, rather than the bigger old favourites,

While HP's market share for the third quarter of 2006 stood at 17.7 per cent, equivalent to 36 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth, Acer had just 11.8 per cent share but grew an impressive 39 per cent quarter-on-quarter.

Dell sat sandwiched between HP and Acer in terms of worldwide popularity with 17.5 per cent of the market and quarter-on-quarter growth of 16 per cent.

In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Acer ate into HP's foothold, resulting in a four per cent lead in terms of market share, relegating the giant's dominance to just two regions: APAC and Latin America.

But with overall market

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growth of 29 per cent year on year, it was the 'smaller' guys who left more established players for dust.

Acer was the only vendor featured in the top six players to beat market growth with its own year-on-year increase of 49 per cent.

Other players joining Acer's success might not have got a place in the overall top spots, but they are still doing very well in terms of development. Apple, Asus and Sony all enjoyed year-on-year growth of 63 per cent, 68 per cent and 47 per cent respectively.

Two of these vendors, Apple and Sony, were the only ones whose entire shipped notebook lines were wide form factors, followed by Acer and Gateway with 98 per cent of their shipments.

'Differences in the penetration of wide aspect ratio notebooks for each brand are dependant upon a number of factors,' said John Jacobs, director of notebook market research at DisplaySearch.

'For a long time, many brands promoted wide as a differentiating factor, and charged a premium for these products, even after panel prices between comparable wide and standard aspect panels disappeared. Brands that were hungry for market share were quick to drop the street price premium, even running 'free-upgrade' promotions encouraging customers to make the transition.'

He added: 'Additionally, brands with a heavier reliance on the enterprise market faced the additional hurdle of convincing IT managers to embrace wide products and support additional configurations.'