Asus plans sales spurt for 2009

IN A BIG LEAP for little laptops, Taiwanese firm Asustek says its goal is to up notebook output by a whopping 77 per cent in 2009, thanks to ever-growing customer demand.

Launching a new series of little Eeeeee PC netbooks, Jonney Shih, Asus’ chairman, noted he hoped his firm would be able to ship about 20 million laptops next year. If the firm achieves its goal, it would propel Asus into the big four of worldwide laptop makers.

Asus is already well on target for shipping its predicted 11.3 million notebooks this year, and the company’s shares were today defying a sinking tech trend by rising almost three percent.

Analysts are also optimistic, reckoning the global notebook market will continue its growth spurt, with some predicting a 20 per cent growth to 155 million units in 2009. Market research outfit, Isuppli, even posits that netbooks will grow more than twice as fast as notebooks at 55 per cent next year, to reach 13.2 million units.

Of course, Asus isn’t alone in the field and the competition, represented by such giants as Acer, Dell and NEC, are no lightweights. All have either already launched (or are just preparing to launch) their own little, low-cost lappies to snatch up a piece of market share pie.

Speaking at Intel’s Taiwan IDF just a day after Chipzilla demonstrated its second generation MID platform, Moorestown, working for the first time, Shih said the MID market was still warming up.

The Asus chairman noted that future growth in the market depended strongly on pricing, design, software support and a standardised version of Wimax. µ

L'Inq
Reuters