Asustek eyes 10% growth in sales

Taiwan's Asustek is aiming for 10 per cent sales growth for its Asus-branded business next year, banking on strong gains for the netbook category of low-cost laptops it pioneered, analysts said.

The company's forecast was roughly in line with those made by IDC and Gartner, two market research companies, on overall notebook shipment growth in 2009. Asustek specialises in manufacturing of all kinds of computer components and also PDAs, notebook computers, servers, networking products, mobile phones, computer cases and cooling systems.

Asustek is aiming to boost unit sales for its branded laptop PCs by about 12 per cent to 6.5 million units, according to research notes from Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, which cited a round of just-concluded sales meetings at Asustek.

The company is aiming for even bigger 44 per cent growth in unit sales for its Eee PC line of netbooks, with a 2009 shipment target of 7.2 million units. Asustek, also the world's biggest motherboard maker, expects motherboard sales to remain flat in 2009 at about 22 million units, the reports said.

Asustek has seen phenomenal growth in some markets on the back of its successful netbook line, with sales in Western Europe surging nearly 200 per cent in the third quarter of this year, propelling it to fourth place on the charts.

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