According to a Taiwanese research firm, Dell overtook Acer as the third largest PC manufacturer by revenue in the fourth quarter. The spot was previously held by Acer, which experienced a 15 percent sales decline in the same period.

“Citing Digitimes Research, Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) reported Sunday Acer notebook shipments fell by more than 15 percent annually that quarter due to rising inventory levels,” writes ZDNet.  “Asustek Computer came in at fifth, behind Acer by 0.2 percentage points in terms of global market share, it noted.”

Dell, which is still two steps behind Hewlett-Packard (now the largest PC manufacturer with a 0.7 percent lead over Lenovo), credits its growth to aggressive investments in product development.

The company made an appearance at CES last week, where it showed off the latest additions to the Inspiron laptop family. The upcoming 14-, 15-and 17-inch models offer better performance and graphics than the previous generation, but that’s not the end of it: to spice things up, Dell announced touch-screen configurations of the same machine that will be available to consumers for only a slightly higher price.

Dell’s desktop earnings dropped 8 percent in 2012 according to Wikibon research, but the company is still pushing forward. Its PC and desktop line-up is coupled with an expanding mobile portfolio and a strong presence in the thin-client market, thanks to the acquisition of Wyse in May 2012.

A few months ago the vendor extended the P line-up of PCoIP zero clients with two VMware-compatible endpoints. The P25 supports two monitors while the P45 can stream to a maximum of four displays. Dell implemented Wyse’s technology to reduce the new models’ energy footprint, and also making them more admin friendly and a performance boost to boot.