ASUS Loses Netbook Share to Acer; DisplaySearch Publishes Top Netbook Manufacters

We have been waiting for some solid evidence of the growth of the netbook market in the past few months and DisplaySearch is finally out with it.

This morning the market research company released a report on how the netbook (or mini-note as they call it) market grew more than 160 percent in the third quarter of 2008. With all the major players entering the market in the past months, the small computers are the “bright spot” of the computer industry, the report states.

The jaw dropping news: ASUS lost significant share to Acer, as Acer captured more than 35 percent of the market with its Aspire One.  Despite its releasing what seems like hoards of netbooks (most recently the Eee PC 1002HA), ASUS dropped below Acer. You can check out the full ranking of netbook manufacturers below:

We are happy to see MSI rising on the list since its Wind has been on our favorite netbooks. Missing from the lineup is Samsung. Perhaps the NC10 was released too late in Q3 to populate sales. We are happy to see the OLPC and Intel’s Classmate appearing as well.

What does the report tell us? That despite critism, the netbook category looks like it is here to stay. We only expect the products to keep coming in the next months (fingers crossed on an Apple entry).