Dell is preparing an assault on the notebook PC market which the company hopes will help it steal a march on rivals such as HP, Lenovo, Acer and Asus by appealing to customers’ sense of style and individuality.

In the next few weeks, Dell will launch a mini-notebook PC running the Linux operating system, a clone of the £200 Asus Eee PC 900 but featuring a larger 8.9in display.

The next six months will see Dell add consumer and business notebooks with personalised casing designs.

It will also focus heavily on emerging markets, where unit sales shipments and revenue growth are fastest, and attempt to reach more customers through an expanded retail presence and channel strategy.

Notebook volumes make up 60 per cent of shipments, reflecting the “pile them high, sell them cheap” strategy deployed by all notebook vendors. Dell expects demand for consumer and small business notebook PCs will continue to escalate in developing markets,.

“Eighty-five per cent of our revenue comes from other sectors [servers, clients, services and storage in partnership with EMC] and we find the business notebook market in developed markets to be more of a steady upgrade cycle,” said Paul Bell, senior vice president and president of Dell Americas.

“The notebook PC market has grown far more quickly than either Gartner or IDC anticipated,” he said.

Dell’s revenues for the first quarter of 2008 grew nine per cent to $16bn (£8bn). Net profit year on year was up just five per cent to $784m (£394m).