ASUS has just revealed its latest quarterly financial results. The Taiwanese tech company posted profits of $229 million for Q3 2012 which is a figure up 43 per cent year-on-year. Regular HEXUS readers will have a good idea how ASUS has done so well, even though it is big in the declining traditional desktop/laptop PC side of the computer business. The company has successfully got a piece of the growing mobile/tablet pie thanks to its partnership with Google and producing the Nexus 7 Android tablet.
The 7-inch ASUS/Google Nexus 7 caused quite a stir or even a “disruption” in the market when announced earlier this year. A relatively low price for a Google branded product with powerful hardware made it almost an impulse buy for many consumers. At launch the tablet sold out in its more popular 16GB storage configuration. Until now ASUS and Google have been rather secretive about the sales figures. However with the release of the Q3 2012 results Asustek Chief Financial Officer David Chang told The Wall Street Journal “At the beginning, it was, for instance, 500K units a month, then maybe 600, 700K. This latest month, it was close to 1 million.”
Selling 1 million units per month still pales in comparison to the sales rate of the Apple iPad. The WSJ says that Apple sold 14 million iPads in Q3 2012, equivalent to 4.67 million per month. Apple is now seeking to attack the 7-inch market with the new iPad mini. ASUS and Google have recently announced improved Nexus 7 devices, trying to secure their market foothold. Also there are other challengers such as the Amazon Kindle tablets and cheap and cheerful no-name Chi-Pads.
At the other end of the market we have more traditional larger tablets like the 10-inch iPad, Google Nexus 10 (made by Samsung) and Microsoft Surface. That’s a lot of choice for the Xmas pressie buying public, a battleground that may give a good indication as to what will happen in the coming year.
