ASUS' 20% On-Year Growth Prediction Unrealistic

Not long ago, Asustek Vice President Chewei Lin reportedly said that the company's motherboard shipments for 2010 were expected to increase by 20% compared with the past year. In 2009, ASUS shipped 21 million units, which was about a 33% share of the global motherboard market. While the report implied that ASUS was intent on gaining a 50% market share in 2010, a more recent update says that the predictions are unrealistic and more of a game of numbers than actual forecasts.

Digitimes reported that, in order to reach the intended 25 million units, the company would have to ship 11 million during the first half of the ongoing year, with the remaining 14 for the third and fourth quarters. Chewei Lin initially suggested that ASUS would be able to reach the intended amount of shipments by taking advantage of emerging markets, such as those in China and Brazil. Lin also reportedly said that there was a high likelihood for the USB 3.0 motherboard market to not start off before the third quarter 2010, mostly due to high costs.

Digitimes sources now say that the prediction reported earlier was just a “game of numbers” and that ASUS' “recent claims that it will be able to increase its motherboard shipments by four million units in 2010 are really just a matter of the company shifting numbers amid the spin-off of its manufacturing arm Pegatron Technology.”

The report implies that, to reach the suggested 20% on-year growth on paper, ASUS would have to “pad out its figures by adding on the 3-4 million motherboards shipped in OEM desktop systems by the Asustek Group to its own shipments.”

The same sources say that there is no way for ASUS to grab such a high portion of the market without some major industry event, such as the sudden exit of a first-tier hardware maker.