Notebooks have really become the new best thing – in fact, they just beat desktop PCs.  Quarterly shipment data gathered and analyzed by iSupply show that for the very first time, laptops were in more demand than good old PCs.

Industry brainiacs did predict this would happen, but somewhere in the near future, maybe around 2011 or so, not practically overnight. Compared to the third quarter of 2007, notebook shipments were 40 percent higher in this year's Q3. The actual number is 38,6 million units sold. Not only did desktop PC shipments not rise, but they actually went for a 1,3% dive, with a total of 38,5 units sold globally.  

According to internetnews.com, iSupply's Matthew Wilkins, computer platform principal analyst, says that we are witnessing the dawn of a new era: that 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,” he said.

It would seem that one of the main reasons for this market shift is the popularity peak recently attained by netbooks. This new product class came at the right moment to fill in the need for some form of cheaper, smaller laptop. More often then not, the technological pillars of netbook models are: Intel's Atom processor on the hardware side with Windows XP or Linux as operating systems.

As for the champions of this notebook power-selling tournament for Q3 2008, they are: Hewlett-Packard, with 14,9 million units sold, and Dell, with 11 million units. Their market shares are 18,8 percent and 13,9 respectively. Acer comes third, with a 12,2 percent market share; this company sold 3 million more notebooks than in Q3 2007, and most of these belong to the netbook variety.