Asustek Computer saw sales of its netbooks in the second quarter fall short of expectations mainly due to competition from Apple's iPad, and has downward adjusted its target shipments for the third quarter, the traditional peak sales period, to 1.4 million units, according to company president and CEO Jerry Shen at an investors conference on August 13.
Because of decreased shipments of motherboards, notebooks and netbooks, Asustek's financial performance for the second quarter declined on quarter. Asustek will continue to offer Eee PCs and will step into the tablet PC segment with its Eee Note and Eee Pad series, Shen pointed out.
Asustek has been gradually increasing outsourced production, with the proportion of total production expected to rise to 30% at the end of 2010 and further to 50% in 2011.
| Asustek: Financial performance, 2Q10 (NT$b) | ||
| Item | Amount | Q/Q |
| Unconsolidated revenues | 75.231 (US$2.29 billion) | (6.1%) |
| Gross margin | 11.9% | down 1.5 percentage points |
| Net profit | 2.94 | (17.9%) |
Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, August 2010
| Asustek: Quarterly shipment volumes for main product lines in 2010 (m units) | ||||
| Product line | 1Q | 2Q | 3Q forecast | Target for whole year |
| Motherboard | 5.8 | 4.5 | 5.2 | 25.0 |
| Notebook PC | 2.5 | 2.4 | 2.7 | 11.0-12.0 |
| Eee PC (netbook PC) | 1.6 | 1.5 | 1.4 | 7.0-8.0 |
Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, August 2010
| Asustek: Product road map for the near future | ||||
| Series | CPU platform | Operating system | Tentative retail price in US$ | Launch time |
| 10-inch Eee PC (netbook) | Intel Atom N550 | Windows 7 | 399 | September 2010 |
| 8.9-inch Eee Note (tablet PC) | ARM architect, Marvell processor | Linux | 199-299 | October 2010 |
| 12-inch Eee Pad (tablet PC) | Intel Arrandale | Windows Embedded Compact 7 | 1,000 | December 2010-January 2011 |
| 10-inch Eee Pad (tablet PC) | ARM architecture, Nvidia Tegra processor | Android | < 399 | March 2011 |
Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, August 2010
Article translated by Adam Hwang
