Taiwan-based notebook vendor Asustek has achieved a strong performance in the tablet PC market, but may not be able to achieve its shipment goal of 20 million notebooks and netbooks combined in 2011, according to source from the market watchers adding that the shipments may only reach 18.5-19 million units.

Asustek executive Kevin Lin pointed out that demand for the company's Eee Pad Transformer is strong and the company is already shipping 10,000 units each month, the same as the Eee PC in Taiwan. However, starting from the end of July, the company will launch two special Eee PC models that were developed with cooperation from Intel. The 10.1-inch X101H, equipped with Windows 7 Starter and 250GB hard drive will be priced at NT$9,000 (US$312), while the X101, features Intel MeeGo operating system and 8GB solid state drive (SSD) will be priced at NT$7,000.

With strong sales of its Eee Pad Transformer, Asustek has recently launched a new enhanced model with both Wi-Fi and 3G support, and has launched its Eee Pad Slider with initial shipments of 300 units and which will be available for a future Android 3.2 upgrade.

Asustek already shipped about 400,000 tablet PCs in the first half of the year and should have no trouble achieving annual shipments of two million units.

Taiwan's local tablet market in 2011 is expected to have a scale of 500,000 units with Apple's iPad to have 53% of the volume and Android-based devices to have the other 47%. Since Asustek has about 40% of share in the Android-based tablet PC market, its annual shipments in Taiwan should reach 80,000-90,000 units and lead the market, while Acer and HTC will trail behind at the second and third position, respectively.

However, for markets such as Hong Kong or Macao, Apple currently still owns a 70% share in the tablet segment. As for Philippine, since tablets are still not yet mainstream, shipments in the country are expected to rise significantly in the fourth quarter.