Asustek Computer, after completing a recent global sales meeting, has announced its operational goals for 2011, aiming for at least NT$380 billion (US$12.75 billion), up 19% from NT$320 billion in 2010 with targets to ship 22.7 million motherboards, up from 21.6 million units in 2010; 14 million notebooks, up from 10.9 million units in 2010; and six million Eee PCs, up from 5.4 million units in 2010.
Although Asustek's motherboard shipments in 2010 are expected to be lower than its original target of 25 million units, set in early 2010, company president Jerry Shen pointed out that gross margin has actually risen because of stable ASPs.
With new strategies to clearly separate each notebook series by market segment and to aggressively cut into the enterprise market, Asustek believes its notebook shipments in 2011 will at least reach 14 million units, but the company internally aims to ship 19 million units, in hopes to become the third largest notebook vendor worldwide.
As for Eee PCs, despite that market demand for netbooks is dropping, Asustek believes its netbook shipments in 2011 will still grow 11% from 2010, but ASPs will have an obvious drop.
As Asustek expects its notebook shipments to grow significantly in 2011, plus the company internally is confident about sales of its Eee Pad product line, the company expects is consolidated revenues will at least reach NT$380 billion, and may even hit NT$400 billion. The company also expects to finish releasing its shareholdings in Pegatron Technology in 2011.
As for the rising Taiwan exchange rate, Asustek pointed out that the problem is affecting notebook makers more than vendors and since the problem is causing component prices to drop, its gross margin performance is turning stable, therefore the rising exchange rate is unlikely to bring any significant affect on Asustek's performance in short term.
Asustek's subsidiary also announced its new Asus WebStorage cloud storage service and will target industries such as tablet PC devices, information security and protection, cloud computing entertainment, and application R&D. Meanwhile the subsidiary also launched its new cloud computing music service, MEar.
In additional news, Gigabyte Technology has also held its sales meeting and is set to ship 20 million motherboards in 2011. Gigabyte shipped about 350,000 notebooks and 18.5 million motherboards in 2010. Gigabyte also announced plans to release its shareholdings in Asustek's USB 3.0 chip design subsidiary ASMedia.