Acer nudged Dell into third place in the world notebook sales chart for the last quarter of 2007, but the market leader, HP, and up-and-coming Asus experienced the most growth.

So state stats released this week by market watcher DisplaySearch. HP shipped 20.1 per cent of all the laptops that left manufacturer warehouses in Q4 2007. Second-placed Acer took 15.9 per cent, Dell 14 per cent. Filling out the top five were Toshiba (8.6 per cent) and Lenovo (8.2 per cent).

Asus accounted for 4.7 per cent of shipments - 1.56m units, of which the best part of 350,000 were Eee PCs by the vendor's own numbers. That total is up 50 per cent on Q4 2006's tally. Only HP matched that year-on-year growth rate, literally so, while most other laptop sellers saw percentage growth increases in the thirties.

Apple was up near the top of the growth chart, with shipments up 38 per cent year on year, second only to HP and Asus, and on a par with Lenovo.

The Mac maker shipped 1.34m MacBooks and MacBook Pros in Q4 2007, well below HP's 6.66m, Acer's 5.25m, Dell's 4.64m, Toshiba's 2.86m and Lenovo's 2.73m. It share came to 4.1 per cent, putting it ninth in the share chart, behind these five, Fujitsu-Siemens, Sony and Asus.

Dell was the top seller in North America, HP in Europe.

DisplaySearch said the most popular panel size and resolution in the third quarter was 15.4in 1280 × 800, which accounted for slightly more than 50 per cent of all notebook PCs shipped in the period. In a distant second was 14.1in 1280 × 800, with a 23 per cent share.

Overall, some 33.09m laptops shipped in Q4 2007, 41 per cent more than the 20.41m that shipped in the year-before quarter.

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