Recently a research conducted by iSuppli has put forward the fact that the global desktop shipments have been exceeded, for the very first time, by shipments of notebook hardware.

It has been suggested by the latest quarterly figures of iSuppli that in the Q3 of 2008, notebook shipments hit 38.6 million, which marks an increase of some 40 percent. On the other hand, there was a drop in the shipments of desktop by 1.3 percent to a quarterly total of 38.5 million units.

In a statement issued by iSuppli, analyst Matthew Wilkins informed, "This marks a major event in the PC market because it marks the start of the age of the notebook. The notebook PC is no longer a tool only for the business market or a computer for the well-off consumer; it's now a computer for everyman."

It has been noted by iSuppli that in terms of individual manufacturing performance, Taiwan-based Acer Inc. emerged as the most active of leading system makers, shipping close to three million more notebooks during Q3 than it did in Q2.

The shipments of Acer increased and reached 12.2 percent of the PC market. It has thus become the world's third biggest manufacturer behind Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., which have a 13.9 percent and 18.8 percent share respectively.

Filling the fourth and the fifth position are Lenovo with 7.5% of the market and Toshiba with 4.6%. However, almost half a point of traction over the quarter was lost by the Cupertino-based Apple that ended the period in seventh place with 3.2 percent.

There was an increase by 15.4% in the global quarterly shipments of PC systems (both desktop and notebook) to hit a total of 79 million units. Furthermore, iSuppli has also increased its unit growth prediction for the year from 12.5 percent to a rounded 13 percent.