Apple Laptop Shipments up 61 Percent

A new report from market research firm DisplaySearch shows Apple's notebook shipments grew 61 percent from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008. Shipments rose from almost 900,000 to just over 1.4 million.

The growth puts Apple in seventh place in overall notebook market share with 4.6 percent. HP (20.8 percent), Dell (15.1 percent), Acer (14.6 percent), Toshiba (9.3 percent), Lenovo (7.5 percent), and Fujitsu-Siemens (5.2 percent) all had higher market share numbers. Asus (4.3 percent) and Sony (4.2 percent) rounded out the list behind Apple.

The growth rate from 2007 to 2008 tells a different story. Apple is second overall in growth behind Asus, which grew 67 percent. Lenovo is the only other company that was close coming in with 58 percent growth.

Most of the other companies saw growth between 20 and 40 percent, except Sony, which posted a meager three percent growth for the same period.

Of particular note in the report is the growing market for the mini-notebook with displays from 4.5-inches to 10.2-inches. This segment saw year-over-year growth of 3056 percent and quarter-over-quarter growth of 70 percent.

In all 31.1 million notebooks were shipped in the first quarter of 2008. DisplaySearch is forecasting shipments of 135 million units for the year.