Taiwanese PC vendor Acer predicts its PC shipments will grow as much as 35 percent this year, led by a strong notebook PC market, a pace of growth that could see the company challenge U.S. rivals by the end of the year.

Acer's revenue grew 25 percent last year to NT$461.7 billion ($14.42 billion) and the company made inroads to the world's largest PC market, the United States, by acquiring Gateway. The revenue figure is preliminary and includes only Gateway's last two-and-a-half months of the year because the merger process took place late in the year.

Acer bought Gateway for $710 million last year.

But the figures and PC shipments had a tremendous impact on Acer's global PC rankings in the final three months of 2007.

The company took a solid third place in global PC shipments last year, topping Chinese rival Lenovo and gaining ground on Dell. Acer's global PC shipment market share during the fourth quarter of 2007 reached 9.6 percent in the fourth quarter, up 60 percent over the same time a year earlier, according to IDC, the industry researcher.

Lenovo, which had been jockeying for third place with Acer all year, fell to fourth with a 7.5 percent share of the global market. HP retained its first place ranking with 19 percent market share, while Dell remained firmly in second place at 14.6 percent.

"Combined Acer/Gateway growth continued to be the fastest among the top vendors and is a very solid performance for the first quarter of merged operations," IDC said in a statement. "Acer also clearly established itself as the third largest vendor, overtaking Lenovo, and seems to be handling the Gateway integration quickly," the statement says.

This year, Acer forecast its PC shipments overall will rise between 30 percent and 35 percent, led by 40 percent shipment growth in notebook PCs. Such strong growth could help the company challenge Dell, which saw its PC shipments grow only 1.7 percent in 2007, according to figures from Gartner. The market researcher put Acer's shipment growth last year at 32.9 percent for the year.

Acer's chairman, J.T. Wang, predicted last October that Acer could take up to a 12 percent share of the global PC market, putting it in the position to challenge Dell.

Acer's net profit was NT$12.9 billion in 2007, up from NT$10.2 billion a year earlier. The company's 2007 figures are all preliminary, Acer said. Final results will be published later.