14 DAY TRIAL // The new year has already entered its second month, which means that IT companies have all they need to set their goals. ASRock is the one now expressing what it hopes the year 2013 will bring.
Back in 2012, ASRock managed to ship around 7.7 million motherboards. That includes everything from mini-ITX to full ATX and larger.
Since 2013 is supposed to be better in all respects, the company hopes its shipments will be even higher, of around 8 million.
The main reason that 2013 is bound to be better than the previous one is simple: the global economic recession has loosened its hold a little more.
According to a Digitimes report, ASRock also hopes to maintain its average selling prices (ASPs) throughout the next 11 months.
Since mainboards account for 80% of ASRock's full revenue, the company doesn't really need incentive to do all it can to achieve its goal.
It won't have a very easy time though. While it does expect, at least for the first half of 2013, to achieve 5-10% sequential growth, it will have to pull all the stops to do it because the PC market is losing speed.
That means an alternative to the price competition of 2012 (which was the main reason for its profit drop) and more shipment deals, perhaps enough to climb from third to second spot on the global mainboard supplier ranking (ASUS and gigabyte are above it).
As part of its strategy, ASRock will expand in China. Depending on how many of the local distributors it charms, the region will account for up to 30% of its total shipments.
For the sake of comparison, only 20% of the company's motherboard shipments went to China last year.
On a related note, ASRock does not plan to push for a spot on the tablet market because it is one of the players with no advantages in that segment.