Acer Tops Netbook Ranking in Japan

Japanese research company iShare Inc announced the results of its survey on low-priced, compact, so-called "mini notebook PCs" in the Japanese market.

The company conducted the survey from Nov 14 to 17, 2008, in light of the recent expansion of the mini notebook PC (netbook) market. Targeting the members of its service primarily in their 20s to 40s, iShare received responses from 422 of them.

First, 41.9% of the respondents said "Yes" to the question asking whether they have ever researched mini notebook PCs on the Internet or at a retail store. There was a large gap between men and women, with 52.4% of the male respondents and 29.1% of the female respondents saying "Yes."

By generation, respondents who said "Yes" accounted for 34.5, 43.3 and 41.4% of those in their 20s, 30s and 40s, respectively. Compared with younger age groups, middle-aged respondents were slightly more interested in mini notebook PCs.

Then iShare asked those who have researched mini notebook PCs what manufacturer they find most attractive. Acer Inc of Taiwan was the most popular maker, being named by 20.9% of them, followed by ASUSTeK Computer Inc of Taiwan at 19.8%. These two companies were more than 5% ahead of the third- and lower-ranked manufacturers.

Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) came to third (13.6%), followed by Dell Inc (11.9%). HP were popular among women, while many in their 40s voted for Dell, according to iShare. The popularities of all the other manufacturers fell below 10%.

Moreover, when the company asked "what part was attractive" about the manufacturers they found attractive (multiple answers allowed), the highest ratio of respondents (59.3%) cited "price," followed by "design" (34.5%), "other basic specifications" (22.0%) and "weight" (15.3%).

By manufacturer, Acer and Dell saw "price" cited by more than 70% of their supporters. Acer's second attraction was "design," which was named by 35.1% of its supporters. As for ASUSTeK, 65.7% of its supporters cited "price," followed by "design" and "battery duration" (both 25.7%).

"Design" ranked above "price" for HP and Toshiba Corp. "Design" and "price" were cited by 50 and 45.8% of the HP supporters and by 46.7 and 40% of the Toshiba supporters, respectively. "Price," "design" and "manufacturer" were equally chosen by 45.5%, which was the highest ratio, of the Fujitsu Ltd supporters.

When iShare asked what factors the respondents seek in mini notebook PCs (multiple answers allowed), "less weight" was cited by the largest 80.8% of them. "Longer operation time" (73.9%), "durability" (48.1%) and "coming with Microsoft Office" (34.6%) took the following positions. There was little difference between genders and generations in this trend, the company said.

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