Under CEO Gianfranco Lanci, Acer is going through what could be called a renaissance. Last year it aggressively entered the netbook market, and soon overtook Asus as the top purveyor of Atom-based toys. Acer is currently the third largest PC vendor in the world, and it's continuing its expansion.

This year it is setting its goals even higher, and hoping to ship 12 million netbooks, more than double than in 2008. Although Acer missed its 6 million unit forecast last year, mainly due to the economic crisis, it managed to ship 4.9 million netbooks, which was still enough to rank first in the virgin netbook market.

Gartner expects netbook shipments will increase to 20.2 million units this year, up from 11.7 million units last year. If all goes well, with a projected 12 million, Acer will dominate the market in 2009 as well. It has recently launched two new 10-inch netbooks, and it's planning to launch an 11.6-inch unit soon.

On another note, the limelight is slowly moving away from Atom-based products, and vendors are focusing their efforts on new CULV-based notebooks. Acer is expected to ship its first CULV-based Timeline series products in a couple of weeks.

More here.

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