Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) expects its annual notebook and netbook computer shipments to total around 12 million units next year, up from 11 million units this year despite the global economic slowdown and sluggish consumer demand, a company official said yesterday.
The specific forecast will be released in December, Jerry Shen (沈振來) Asustek’s chief executive officer said in a media briefing yesterday.
The company’s notebook sales are expected to reach between 6.2 million and 6.3 million units, Shen said, adding that the Taipei-based company wants to expand its customer base and enter into the middle and high-end notebook market early next year.
The official’s remark was made after the company yesterday introduced the S101 Eee model, a slim laptop only 1.8cm thick and weighing less than 1kg.
Celebrating the Eee PC’s first anniversary yesterday, Asustek is confident that this S101 model priced at US$699 per unit will sell between 40,000 and 50,000 units in the first month, Shen said.
S101 will be available in the Asia Pacific region, specifically in Taiwan and Hong Kong, today. It is expected to be in stores and retailers in Europe by the middle of the month.
The retail price for S101 is NT$19,988 in Taiwan.
Asustek created a market for low-priced mini-laptops when it launched its first netbook Eee PC last October. Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc and Acer Inc (宏碁) soon followed with their own low-cost laptops.
Shen also confirmed the company’s strategy to implement multi-brands to cater to different market groups.
The Eee brand offers low-end PCs priced between US$200 and US$1,000, while the Asus brand will target high-end PCs above US$1,000.
Shen said he does not fear that the two product groups under the same corporate umbrella would cannibalize each other, as the two types of products meet different computing needs.
He said computer shoppers look first at screen size in determining their purchase decisions. In North America and Europe, 80 percent of sales go towards 14-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch laptops.
“Anything under 10 inches we call a netbook; anything above 11 inches are notebooks. So far the netbook pie is bigger than we imagined,” he said.
Eee has sold more than 4 million netbooks worldwide in one year, he said.
“Eee’s new addition, the S101, is in the Eee family, but its added-value and innovative technology really make it a mid-tier product,” Shen said.
“With these two segments covered, we want to venture into the high-end market and you’ll start seeing new product offerings on the market early next year,” he said.
Other than netbooks, the Eee family also incorporates basic low-priced desktops.
The EeeTop touch screen desktop has also sold well in Europe. In August and last month, over 100,000 units of the EeeTop were sold globally, with sales coming primarily from Europe, with a bright outlook for this month.
Rather than just manufacturing PCs, over the last couple of months, the computer maker has also been focusing more on creating internal software to be installed on their computers that offers an unprecedented user experience.
An example falls under the concept of cloud computing. A person can take photos, send it to Asustek’s online storage system and then designate who gets access to this photo library.
“This bonus software will set Asus apart from other competitors and give us an edge in providing more than anyone else on the market,” Shen said.
Asustek shares closed 0.52 percent lower at NT$57.00 yesterday. The stock is down 33.5 percent for the year.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS