Lenovo has taken advantage of Acer’s recent poor performance to leapfrogged Acer to become the third-largest computer brand worldwide — largely on the strength of sales in China and the U.S., industry watcher IHS reports. The survey also found that apart from a few standouts — Lenovo, Samsung and Apple — the industry as a whole is seeing anemic growth over 2010.
Lenovo’s shipments rose from 8.2 million units in the first quarter of the year to 10.2 million in Q2, a 25.6 percent quarterly growth that contributed to an overall year-over-year (Y/Y) growth of 23 percent. Only Apple (up 13.6 percent Y/Y) and Samsung (31.3 percent Y/Y) managed double-digit growth from 2010, while most manufacturers saw an average of four percent growth, with five percent sequential growth from the previous quarter.
Acer’s inability to pivot on weakening PC growth and the trend towards mobile devices — particularly in western Europe — left it with a drop of four percent from the previous quarter and a 20 percent drop Y/Y, causing the former number-two ranked maker to drop to fourth place. Another maker, Asus, moved ahead of Japan’s Toshiba to round out the top five — but could find itself threatened by Apple, which is within one percentage point of entering the top five worldwide for notebook and desktop hardware (the IHS rankings do not consider mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones in the rankings).
Although Samsung managed industry-leading growth in Q2, shipments are still well below other manufacturers, at 3.1 million units this year compared to 2.4 million a year ago.
Overall, the survey shows a positive trend for the industry as a whole after three quarters of shrinking demand and negative growth. As a whole, the industry shipped 85.6 million units in the second quarter, compared to 82.6 million in the year-ago quarter — a rise of 3.7 percent — and up six percent from the 80.8 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2011.
IHS credits strong demand in the corporate and enterprise sectors with much of Lenovo’s growth, along with keeping HP and Dell in their respective first and second place rankings. HP was up only 0.02 percent over the previous quarter, however, while Dell managed 6.1 percent increases in the same period.
