Research firm IDC says that 30% of “consumer portable” computer sold in the EMEA region in the fourth quarter of 2008 were mini-laptops. EMEA covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Overall, 3.6 million netbooks were sold in the region, accounting for 20% of overall notebook sales and an even higher percentage of consumer oriented devices.

4 out of 5 of those netbooks were sold in western Europe, where sales have been helped along by mobile carriers offering subsidized netbooks to customers who sign up for long term wireless broadband plans.

Acer and Asus are selling more netbooks in the region than all the other laptop makers combined. Acer has just over 30% of the market, while Asus has a 28% market share. THe next closest competitor is HP, which shipped 253,000 units to obtain 7% of the market share.

Laptop sales are continuing to climb and low cost ultraportables like the Asus Eee PC deserve at least some of the blame/credit. That’s according to a new report from IDC.

The report shows that desktop PC sales are down a bit this year in the US, but are still on the rise in other parts of the world. What’s more interesting is that portable computer sales are shooting up both in the US and abroad.

Western Europe saw a 60% increase in consumer portable computer sales over last year, with low cost computers like the Eee PC accounting for a significant portion of the market.

via OSstatic