Asus 2012 Annual Report Download - page 5

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I. Letter to Shareholders
Two foremost important incidents affected the IT industry in 2012, namely the continuous coopetition
between Tablet PC and PC and the launch of Win8 in Q4. First, let us get an insight to the observation on
the industry research institution. Research institution IDC suggested that the poor marketing performance
for PC in Q4 last year which led to a year with the weakest sales during busy seasons. The data revealed
that the launch of Win8 has not significantly boosted the sales in the overall market. About 202 million
laptops were shipped last year with an annual decline of 3.4%, indicating a less-than-expected
performance. Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, also mentioned that: “Tablets have
dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets
rather than replacing older PCs. Whereas as once we imagined a world in which individual users would
have both a PC and a tablet as personal devices, we increasingly suspect that most individuals will shift
consumption activity to a personal tablet, and perform creative and administrative tasks on a shared PC.
There will be some individuals who retain both, but we believe they will be exception and not the norm.
Therefore, we hypothesize that buyers will not replace secondary PCs in the household, instead allowing
them to age out and shifting consumption to a tablet.”
Although the laptop computer market has somewhat stopped growing, it is possible to turn threats into
opportunities. If we sum up the quantity of laptop computer and Tablet PC, the figure still looks like a
promising growth of over 2 digits. ASUS is targeting at the laptop plus tablet combo battle field and even
possibly adding Smartphone to form a triple battlefield. ASUS squeezed into world's top 3 of NB PC
market share by the end of last year and is taking challenges to become the world’s top 2 of the combo
market. The future is the battlefield for combo and triple battlefield and ASUS has already made its name
with tablet PC, plus the internal superior R&D resources invested on Android and Win8, the industry
changes are bound to broaden the gap of outcome among the different brands, while ASUS remains as a
member of winners.
ASUS attained individual operating income of NTD375.1 billion for the parent company in 2012 with an
earnings before tax of NTD26.714 billion and net income of NTD22.422 billion, growing at 35% as
compared with that in 2011. The consolidated operating income for ASUS computer brands (unaudited
company numbers) for 2012 was NTD413.1 billion, growing at 18% as compared with that in 2011. The
business related operating income was NTD22.011 billion, growing by 23% as compared with that in
2011.
ASUS is internationally recognized for its innovation and aesthetics. In 2012 alone, ASUS products have
received 4,168 internationally renowned awards with an average of 11.4 international awards received per
day. These awards demonstrate the best implementation of ASUS employees in “wonder innovation and
perfect quality,” which also serve as the best support for the superiority and quality assurance for ASUS
products. Additionally, in the survey sponsored by Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic
Affairs and organized by Interbrand in 2012, ASUS stayed on the top 3 Taiwan Top10 Global Brands for
ten consecutive years with the brand value reaching as high as USD1.662 billion and is also the only
sustained growing company among the top three brand values.
In recent years, ASUS has created a number of popular consumer products with innovative mentality, to
pursue extreme aesthetics incessantly, not only from the product appearance but also involving the
attentive design for user experience. ASUS products are user-oriented, building an unparallel user
experience supplemented by stunning aesthetic process to make aggressive inroads into the consumer
market (mind share). The key to increase product competitiveness lies on observing consumers’ user
behavior and trends with details, thereby to make the most proper adjustment following the trend and
changes in order to meet consumer demand, conveying the experience of “people” oriented and starting
out with “mindset.”
Last June, ASUS cooperated with Google for the release of first Jelly Bean Tablet Nexus 7, the first tablet
to be equipped with the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system. Nexus 7 combines the strong
hardware design power from ASUS and the latest software service from Google, taking the advantage of