ASUS has recently reported on its second financial quarter of 2015. This usually represents the worst of its results for the whole year and as you might predict, given market trends, this year's trough was even deeper than last year's. It shipped 4.3 million laptops and 500,000 desktops in Q2 2015. In the same quarter last year it sold 4.8 million laptops and 600,000 desktops. As with many similar companies, ASUS is therefore pushing towards developing and selling more mobile devices.
Moving into the last two quarters of 2015, ASUS is trying to boost demand for its laptops to maintain shipment volumes above 20 million per year, reports DigiTimes. To this end it has been launching laptops in the gaming segment, ultra-portable segment and high-price-performance ratio segment such as the T100 series.
It expects that Q3 figures for laptop and desktop shipments should reach 4.8 million and 600,000 respectively. ASUS hopes to concentrate laptop shipping growth in the gaming and Zenbook ranges, which offer better margins. While these two ranges bring in about a fifth of company revenue, ASUS expects them to generate half or more of its profits during H2.
Computer peripherals and components are going to benefit from more cross-department cooperation and collaborative marketing. AUS RoG gaming branded items are seen as offering potential for expansion.
Looking at alternative computing devices as sources of revenue, ASUS foresees that by the end of 2017 it will generate more cash from mobile devices than PCs. It also expects profits from mobile device sales to catch up with those from the PC sector, despite the commoditisation we are seeing in that part of the smartphone market not dominated by Apple.
In its most recent (Q2 2015) results ASUS shipped 1 million tablets bringing its total to 2.5 million for H1. However last year it had sold 4.1 million by this time. It aims to boost its tablet sales in H2 by launching the new ZenPad range, and hopes to get more tablet sales to enterprise, bravely maintaining its 7 million goal for the whole of 2015. In the smartphone market ASUS shipped 5 million units in Q2 (better than the 4 million sold in Q1) and expects to ship 6 million next quarter. It is targeting sales of between 17 and 20 million ZenPhones for the year.
