Asus Q3: PC notebooks, Nexus 7 tablet sales boost profits
Taiwanese PC and tablet maker Asus has reported healthy third quarter results, spurred on by strong sales of the firm's tablets and notebook computers.
Asus reported NT$6.71 billion New Taiwanese dollars (US $229 million) in net profit on revenue of NT$111.43 billion (US $3.81bn), a profit increase of 9 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, and an 18 percent increase in revenue on the prior quarter.
The firm was expected to achieve NT$5.41 billion (US$185m) in profit on average across more than a dozen analysts, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Despite the firm's dwindling netbook range, its PC notebook range is also faring well, increasing shipments to 5 million from the second quarter.
However, Asus has kept ahead of the global PC shipment decline by breaking into the tablet market, offering Windows 8-based devices to the market. Tablet shipments have jumped from 800,000 in the second quarter to 2.3 million shipments in the third quarter, an increase of almost three-fold.
Asus, of course, built the latest Android-powered Google Nexus 7 tablet, dubbed the "best selling Android tablet ever" by one U.K. retailer.
Gartner said Asus' shipments have risen by almost 12 percent in the third quarter, pushing its PC market share to 7.3 percent. IDC agrees to a greater extent on the rough figures, even if it doesn't believe Lenovo is yet the world's number one PC maker by shipments. Both research firms believe bar Lenovo and Asus, all other major PC makers -- including HP, Dell, and Acer -- have fallen considerably by two-figure percentages each in market share rankings.
Global PC makers have seen a general decline over the past year as a result of the industry slowdown in the run up to the launch of Windows 8, which was released on Friday.
Asus forecast higher shipments of notebooks and tablets for the coming quarter. The firm said it expects notebook shipments to increase by 10 percent to 5.5 million units, and tablets up by 13 percent to 2.6 million shipments.