Wistron Enters Asustek's Tablet PC Supply Chain

Taipei, Dec. 8, 2011 (CENS)--Wistron Corp., one of Taiwan's leading contract manufacturers of personal computers, has acquired orders from Asustek Computer Inc. to manufacture the latter's medium- and low-tier tablet PCs named Eee Pad Transformer which will be launched in the first quarter of 2012.

Still, Regatron Corporation, an affiliate of Asustek, will keep its position as Asustek's most important supplier for tablet PCs. In the first quarter of 2012, Regatron will account for over 60% of Austek's contract orders for tablet PCs.

Wistron said it will ship one million tablet PCs in 2011. At present, Wistron focuses on production of tablet PCs on the special-project basis with a small batch of production volume. In comparison, its peers, including Compal Electronics Inc. and Inventec Corp., mainly concentrate on the contract production for such big brands as Acer, Lenovo and Hewlett Packard.

With the orders from Asustek, Wistron will be able to challenge shipment of four million tablet PCs in 2012, three to four times that of this year. This is the first time for Wistron to contract-manufacture tablet PCs for Asustek. There is concern if Wistron will have chance to expand contract production to the notebook computer arena with Asustek in the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, an industry insider argued that there is little chance for Wistron to contract manufacture notebook PCs for Asustek in 2012 as the latter has already settled orders with its major suppliers, i.e. Regatron, Compal, and Quanta Computer Inc.

Asustek will challenge shipment of 22 million up to 23.8 million notebook PCs in 2012, up 15 up to 20% year-on-year. As Asustek will see over 20 million notebook PCs in annual shipment beginning from 2012, some believed chances will be great for Wistron to acquire the contract orders for notebook PCs from Asustek in 2013.

Aimed at becoming the largest brand for the Android- and Windows8-enabled tablet PCs, Asustek has aimed to challenge a goal of six million tablet PCs in 2012, three times that of this year's 1.8 million units.