Toshiba and Acer are butting heads as Toshiba narrowly takes Acer's place as the #3 laptop provider in the world. With 2.24 Million laptops shipped in the first quarter of this year, their focus on low-cost machines has paid off as they saw substantial gains in marketshare. This puts them at a 12.3% total share of the market, and you can probably guess as to who makes up the #1 and #2 positions. Toshiba is very happy with the results.
Unspecified contract manufacturers for Toshiba hinted that the Japan vendor has begun pushing low-cost notebook models in the Japan market, the region where Toshiba currently has its best sales. The US and Asia-Pacific regions are the Japan vendor's second- and third-largest markets, respectively, the makers added. The low-price strategy enabled Toshiba to enjoy a sequential sales increase of 83% in the Japan notebook market in the first quarter of 2006, the makers said.
Acer will doubtless try to find a way to make that up, which only means good things for people buying laptops. More than just on-par for prices compared to a desktop, laptop sales continue to grow fast, while desktop sales fall.