ASUS, the Chinese manufacturer of desktops, laptops, and handsets, which launched its second version of the Eee PC on Thursday, expects to sell about 30,000 units per month here in three months’ time, although it has been able to sell only 10,000 units of the product since its launch a few months back in India.
Benson Lin, general manager, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, ASUS, said, “We plan to sell as much as 30,000 units of the second version of Eee PC in India in the coming two to three months.”
However, analysts are not quite bullish over ASUS’s story of selling such a huge number of units in India. Sumanta Mukherjee, an analyst with IDC India, said, “We do not see any such huge surge in India that is unfulfilled. The market has still not matured here and we see some growth only after December, which is when we expect domestic and global conditions to improve.” According to IDC’s India Quarterly PC Tracker report for Q1 2008, of the total shipment of 1,760,329 laptops in India, ultraportables comprised of only 6%. The segment comprises products from other players like HCL’s MiLeap and HP’s Mini-notebook.
According to the company, India is one of the most important markets in Asia for Eee PC.
Francis Kao, business development manager – notebook and mobile system, ASUS Technology, said, “We are targeting a sale of 5 million units across the globe, of which we have been able to sell about 1.3 million. In India we have sold about 10,000 units because we have been facing supply issues.”
According to Kao, the company will be now focussing on larger shipments to India. “We plan to double our production for global needs by July 2009,” he added. Major production for Eee PCs is done out of its manufacturing unit in Shanghai.