“Looking ahead to 2015, the notebook market will only be able to maintain the same overall shipment level as last year,” said Caroline Chen, Notebook Analyst for TrendForce.

“and the growth of some brands will come at the expense of others.”

In 2015, there will be two brands dominating the notebook market while four other brands fighting over the remaining shares. HP and its rival Lenovo will still occupy the top two spots in the market. Vendors ranked from three to six will not find their position safe as they are trying to overtake each other in a tight race, and they will see their market shares fluctuate between 10 and 12%.

HP experienced an improvement in its first quarter notebook shipments, and in the subsequent quarters it posted positive growth. HP furthermore enjoyed its best shipment growth since 2010 in the fourth quarter. Overall, HP increased its shipment by 19.5% compared with 2013 and put itself in the first place with 20.1% of the market share.

Lenovo (excluding its acquired brands) occupied the second place in the 2014 notebook market with a year-on-year growth of 14% and a market share of 17.5%. The stagnation in its domestic market prevented Lenovo from surpassing HP in total units shipped.

Dell benefitted from the commercial demand created by businesses phasing out their Windows XP systems. Dell retained its position as number three in the 2014 notebook market with an annual growth of 12.2% and a market share of 12.3%. The successful market performance in 2014 was Dell’s first great achievement since it went private in 2013.

Following closely at number four is Asus. Asus’ success was mainly attributed to its 10.1-inch, 2-in-1 model T100, which contributed over 10% of its total shipments in 2014 and help the brand to expand its market share to 11%, thus displacing Acer from the number four spot.

Acer depended on the outstanding performance of Chromebook to maintain its shipment volume in the market. Even though there was no significant rise in the total shipments for Acer, it managed to bounce back after its great fall and slid downward in rankings by only one spot at number five.

Apple had the biggest gain in 2014 owing to its price-lowering strategy that made its takeover of the midrange and premium market complete. Apple posted a spectacular year-on-year growth of 46.4% and increased its market share to 9.3%. It shot past Toshiba to become number six worldwide and closing in on Acer in terms of shipments.