14 DAY TRIAL // As the year draws to a close, so, too, must the financial calculations of corporations, which means that, whether through official or unofficial channels, the performance of companies, in this case ASUS, will become known.
Digitimes relayed some of what its ever anonymous sources were able to procure in terms of corporate information.
Then again, this is not so much a leak of highly sensitive data as it is a set of estimates as to what ASUS expects to have accomplished by the end of the year.
2011 might actually turn out to be quite rewarding, or at least rewarding enough that ASUS is still confident in its ultimate goal.
Said goal is to attain the spot of world's third greatest supplier of notebooks in three years.
For 2011, it is expected that the amount of sold notebook will be 14 to 14.3 million, not a small number in fact.
To that are added 4.6-4.8 million Eee PC sales (these are the company's netbooks) and between 1.7 and 1.8 million tablets.
Moving ahead, the company means to even more clearly help differentiate between its notebook series, so as to make sure that tablets impact their sales as little as possible.
The ultrabooks (Zenbooks) will need a particular brand of attention, not because they are hard see apart, but because they are tricky when it comes to affordability.
That goes for all ultrabooks really, as every other company will do its best to lower prices as well.
For 2012, ASUS hopes to ship about 17 or 18 million more notebooks and then even more in 2013 and 2014.
As for its tablets, it might not make it past 3.5 million next year, even though it will, or should, develop a 7-incher of $299 or thereabouts (226 Euro). Apple will launch the iPad 2 after all, and there will be other 7-inch critters with accessible prices by then as well (they already are even).