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FRANKFURT - Hewlett-Packard extended its lead over rival Dell in the global PC market in the third quarter, thanks to a strong network of resellers and focus on notebooks, iSuppli said today.
The market research firm said HP's 13.1 million PCs shipped in the quarter gave it a 19.1-per cent share of the market, up from 16.5 per cent a year ago, and marked its fifth straight quarter at the top of the global PC market.
Dell underperformed the market with 1.5-per cent growth in shipments in the quarter, knocking its market share to 14.6 per cent from 16.3 per cent.
"Despite a renewed focus on its PC business, and the return of Michael Dell to the company's helm, Dell's channel business is taking time to ramp up and have an impact on company sales," iSuppli principal analyst Matthew Wilkins said in a statement.
Dell's smaller, Taiwanese rival Acer -- which recently bought US rival Gateway -- capitalised on its strength in laptop computers and strong sales in Asia and Europe to increase its market share to 7.9 per cent from 5.4 per cent.
China's Lenovo, which bought the PC unit of IBM in 2005, kept its third-placed global ranking with market share of 8.1 per cent.
"Acer is almost certain to overtake Lenovo in the fourth quarter as a result of the Gateway acquisition and its continued momentum in the notebook PC market," iSuppli said.
Japan's Toshiba took fifth place.
ISuppli reiterated its forecast for PC unit shipments to grow by 12 per cent this year.
- REUTERS