ASUS up on tablets but down on netbooks

ASUS on Tuesday local time posted strong results that confirmed the rapid fall of netbooks but also gave the company hope through tablets. The Taiwan PC builder's CFO David Chang admitted ASUS would fall well under its original goals for netbooks in 2011 and would ship just four million to 4.5 million Eee PCs this year, as much as a third under its original six million-unit target. Tablets like the Eee Pad Transformer, however, were helping make up for the gap, Chang said.

About 300,000 of the predominantly Android-based tablets were shipping every month. While the number wasn't as high as the 500,000 netbooks a month that ASUS originally wanted to ship, the tablets were more valuable since they commanded higher asking prices. An Eee Pad Transformer officially costs $400 where most Eee PCs cost around $300.

Full-size notebooks were also up, Chang added: the company had hit a record of 1.3 million notebooks a month. Many expect the company's combined netbooks and notebooks to reach 18.5 million to 19 million a year.

As a whole, ASUS made the equivalent of $1.1 billion in revenue in July, up 38 percent from a year ago and 13 percent more than it made just this past June.

While Microsoft won't suffer too greatly given ASUS' higher notebook shipments, the results reflect an overall plunge in netbook sales instigated primarily by the iPad. Other PC vendors that were overdependent on netbooks, like Acer, haven't transitioned as gracefully and have seen their PC market share drop sharply with tablet sales not growing quickly enough to make up the difference.

By Electronista Staff