When Acer President Gianfranco Lanci said that his company would “very soon” surpass Dell in the PC rankings he was not kidding. By very soon he clearly meant “today.”

IDC has just released its PC tracker report for the third quarter of 2009, and for the very first time, Acer is now the number 2 producer of PC’s in the whole world with 14 percent. As expected Hewlett-Packard is the top dog with 20.2 percent of PCs shipped, and Dell dropped to 12.7 percent.

For some time now Acer and Dell’s momentum has been headed in opposite directions, so the report was not totally a surprise. But the rise of Acer has more than impressive. If we wer to go back a couple of years ago, most people wouldn’t know about the Taiwanese brand. However, since it took over Gateway and started its aggressive attack on retail laptops in the US and European market, it became a force to reckon with.

“It’s a pretty amazing transition in market leadership by Acer,” said Loren Loverde, the program director of IDC’s PC Tracker. “It’s reflective of the changes in form factors and channels and pricing–the way we’ve shifted to lower cost portables, particularly in consumer and retail, which is where Dell was not as strong.”