Acer, the world’s third largest computer vendor, shipped just over 5 million netbooks last year, and expects to ship 10 million to 12 million netbooks this year, reported the company this week.
Asustek, which pioneered netbooks with its popular Eee PCs, shipped 4.9 million units last year, just behind Acer. Acer managed to win the 2008 netbook title despite Asustek’s six month lead in the market. Acer’s Aspire One didn’t ship until the second half of last year, but the device was a hit, and sales soared mainly because Acer was able to launch globally, analysts say.
Gartner and Acer estimate that netbook shipments will increase to 20 million units this year, up from 11.7 million units last year with 50 million netbooks expected to be shipped in 2012.
Asus plans to continue using Microsoft Windows OSs in its popular Eee PC netbooks this year despite widespread interest in alternatives such as Google’s Android software.
“Windows is what most consumers are used to,” said Jerry Shen, CEO of Asus, during an investors conference on Thursday in Taipei. Shim expects the netbook market share will hold at 15 percent.
Android runs on inexpensive, low power microprocessors such as those made by ARM, also used in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. But x86 chips are more attractive for netbooks for several reasons, said Shen, including the wealth of software made to work on the microprocessors.
Microsoft declined to say when Windows 7 will be commercially available, despite Microsoft making the final beta version available to testers today. The distribution of the RC is one of the last steps before the Windows 7 code is locked down and sent off to manufacturers ahead of its commercial release.
ZDNet reports installing Windows 7 on a netbook is pretty straight-forward as long as you either have access to a USB optical drive, or are able to put the installation files onto a USB flash drive. The whole install process took a little over 30 minutes and the installation consumed some 7.5GB of drive space. But you might need to add more RAM.
On Thursday Acer marketing director Bobby Watkins told tech blog Pocket-lint.com to expect the new operating system by fall: “23rd October is the date the Windows 7 will be available,” Watkins is quoted as saying.
