Canalys Mobility Forum Who rules the European netbook market? Acer, by a long chalk, despite the positive write-up given to rival machines from Samsung and Dell.

Speaking this week at the Canalys Mobility Forum in London, Canalys analyst Natalie Spitz said Acer commanded 32.4 per cent of the netbook market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) during Q3 2009, with unit shipments growing by 4.2 percent between that quarter and Q3 2008.

Asus, the name most Register Hardware readers undoubtedly associate with netbooks and arguably the creator of the genre, at least in its modern form, took 19.6 per cent of the market. Shipments were up 11.6 per cent.

Samsung, which hadn't launched a netbook in Europe before Q4 2008, now has 12 per cent of the market in Q3 2009, followed by HP (11.6 per cent), Toshiba (4.2 per cent) and Dell (3.5 per cent).

Like Samsung, neither Dell nor Toshiba had a market presence of any size in Q3 2008, Spitz indicated. HP did, but it was small, allowing the company to show a 327.8 per cent increase in unit shipments year on year.

Overall, some 3.7m netbooks shipped into EMEA during Q3, 68.9 per cent more than shipped in the year-ago quarter. Portable PC shipments as a whole - ie. netbooks plus notebooks - were down 8.3 per cent.

Spitz said that netbooks accounted for 14 per cent of all PCs shipped in the region during the quarter, up from eight per cent. Notebooks accounted for 56 per cent of shipments, desktops for 28 per cent. ®