14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this year, both ASUS and MSI, two of the largest manufacturers of netbook systems, publicly announced their expectations regarding the shipments of their small-sized, low-power portable systems. ASUS' CEO, Jerry Shen, said that his company expected to ship about 5 million units of Eee PC netbook systems, which would account for 50% of the overall netbook market. Competitor MSI, on the other hand, said that it estimated to ship at least 300,000 units of the company's Wind netbook, a figure that was later raised to 500,000 units.
It now appears that MSI has changed initial predictions regarding the expected shipments of its Wind netbook. According to Digitimes, the Taiwanese company is now expecting to reach annual shipments in the range of 600,000 to 700,000 units, this year alone.
The main reason behind the sudden change in the initial shipments forecast is that there are many white-box vendors in Europe and Southeast Asia that are currently placing orders for MSI's netbook. These vendors are selling the Wind under their own brand and, as we already know, there are many re-branded MSI Wind netbooks out there.
Furthermore, rumor also has it that the company is hoping that the shipments for its fully-fledged notebooks will reach 800,000 to one million units by the end of this year, which, along with the increase in netbook shipments, would eventually allow MSI to become a real threat to rival Samsung, in becoming one of the top-ten worldwide vendors of portable computer systems.
With the launch of MSI's new Wind U120 system, the company's netbook shipments should easily fall within the above-mentioned expectations. However, unlike the case when the first Wind netbook was released, the market has now grown considerably, and we have already seen a number of new netbook models being released by several major systems vendors.