No. 1 laptop firm expects robust sales

Asustek expects a 50 percent jump in domestic notebook shipments for this year, building on the 48 percent growth it posted last year.

Asustek Computer Inc, the nation's No. 1 notebook vendor, is gearing up for 50 percent growth in its local notebook shipment this year, fueled by new software solutions, company executives said yesterday.

"Companies such as Intel Corp will be aggressively pushing new technologies this year, which will help create replacement demand and boost volume in the local market," Sunny Han, Asustek's global brand marketing director, told reporters at a product launch.

Last month, Intel launched its Napa platform, which uses two processing cores on a single chip to boost notebook performance. Microsoft Corp is also expected to introduce its new Windows operating system, dubbed "Vista," in the second half of the year.

These new platforms will serve as a catalyst to raise the nation's total shipment of portable computers to as much as 900,000 units, up from 746,000 units last year, according to Han.

Asustek shipped a total of 254,000 units in the local market last year, reporting 48 percent growth over the previous year.

2006 shipments
The company aims to maintain its leadership this year by exceeding last year's shipments and estimates that this year's will reach around 370,000 notebooks, Han said.

In terms of global markets, Asustek, the world's largest motherboard maker, aims to ship 3 million units of own-brand notebooks, compared with 1.8 million units last year, he added.

Notebook leaders
According to preliminary results from technology research house International Data Corp, Asustek was the top notebook maker in Taiwan last year with a 34 percent market share, partly attributed to its leadership in quarterly shipments, which reached 91,000 units in the final three months of last year.

Acer Inc was the runner up with 216,000 units sold, or a 29 percent market share.

Hewlett-Packard Co trailed in third place, with 71,000 units sold and a 9.6 percent market share, while Lenovo Group Ltd took fourth, selling 54,000 units and taking a 7.2 percent share of the market, the data showed.

Toshiba Corp was in the fifth spot, at 30,000 units sold, accounting for 4.1 percent of the market.

Eyeing the positive outlook for the first quarter, Asustek is betting on the Taipei Multimedia Computer Show, which will open tomorrow at the Taipei World Trade Center Hall I and runs through Sunday.

The company will promote its W5F laptop at the show. It claims the W5F is the industry's first Napa-based notebook. The computer is available with a 12-inch screen.

"Compared with other Napa notebooks, with screens of 14 or 15 inches, our W5F overcame technical difficulties by putting dual cores in a more compact form factor, offering users greater mobility," Asustek's sales director Kevin Lin said.