According to market watcher NPD, Apple was the third largest laptop vendor during June, with only Toshiba and HP selling more machines. This puts Apple ahead of other major names such as Dell, Gateway and Lenovo, as buyers continue to choose Apple's updated MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks over the more conventional brands. Figures show that Apple accounted for 17.6% of the laptop market, up from 14.3% in May, which also means that more than one in six laptops sold in the USA are made by Apple. However, these are only based on retailer sales, so the direct-to-buyer figures may tell a completely different story. This news comes soon after Apple managed to take the third-spot in overall computer sales, tied with Gateway on 5.6% (behind Dell and HP).

Acer Inc., one of the world's leading branded PC vendors, announced today it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gateway, Inc. Gateway is the fourth largest PC company in the US and a leading retail PC provider. The combination will create a multi-branded PC-company with over US$15 billion in revenues and shipments in excess of 20 million PC units per year.

After the well known Sony notebook battery issues sparked off worries among numerous companies last year, the problems aren't over yet, with Gateway having it's second recall in under a year. The notebook maker has now announced that it is to recall a further 14,000 batteries - on top of the 35,000 Sony batteries it recalled in October. This time round the batteries for the 400VTX and 450ROG laptops manufactured between May and July 2003 are to be replaced, with the battery model numbers being 6500760 and 6500761 respectively. If you suspect you may be affected by this, visit this Gateway site to find further instructions.

In a figurative triple play, the Delaware Multimedia Patent Trust (MPT) is suing three technology giants for large sums of money. They are claiming that they own patents to Lucent technologies, and the right to sue for past infringements. The MPT is suing over patents regarding an "adaptive non-linear quantizer", "optimized scanning of transform coefficients in video coding", and "video coding with optimized low complexity variable length codes". The MPT wants a lot of money to cover damages, costs, and expenses.