Netbook pioneer Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) yesterday revised its laptop shipments upwards to 18 million this year because of strong market share growth in the first quarter and positive outlook for the whole year. The company also prepares to launch the Eee Pad to counter Apple Inc’s hot-selling iPad.
That target is an increase of 50 percent over last year and up from its previous goal of 16 million, Asustek said in a statement.
After an investor conference yesterday, CEO Jerry Shen (沈振來) told reporters that Asustek expects as much as an 80 percent growth in shipments of its conventional notebooks, while its popular Eee PC netbooks are expected to grow 20 percent this year.
Both Asustek and Acer, which held its investor conference on Thursday, said that netbook momentum is slowing, but Asustek said it would maintain the leadership in the sector by keeping a 20 percent market share.
Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci said on Thursday that its netbook shipments were expected to grow 45 percent to 50 percent this year.
Asustek, the No. 5 player in the global laptop market in the first quarter, is still on track to reach its goal of being No. 3 next year.
The company said it is working to clinch the No. 4 spot by the end of the year.
Asustek plans to unveil its Eee Pad at the Computex Taipei trade show next month, but Shen refused to commit to a timeframe for the commercial launch.
“We are working with Microsoft on the first stage,” Shen said. “But we will make sure our product creates as much excitement as when we launched the Eee PCs.”
IPads and Eee Pads rely heavily on cloud computing, which allows users to access data remotely stored in third-party storage, instead of their computer hard disks.
Shen believes there’s only a small overlap in functionality between iPads and netbooks because netbooks are more a personal computing device, while iPads use cloud computing.
Shen said Eee Pads would only reach store shelves when the firm’s content and services on the “cloud” are readily available and mature.
First-quarter profits grew more than 10-fold from a year earlier to NT$4.9 billion (US$148 million).
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