Asus aiming to ship up to 6m tablets in 2012

The Taiwanese manufacturer announced Friday that it now expects to ship anywhere from 3 million to 6 million tablet PCs in all of 2012.

According to CENS, Asus chairman Jonney Shih is optimistic about the tablet market and even cited the iPad as an inspiration for the company’s own tablet offerings. He commented further on what he believes to be the major differentiating factor between tablets and notebooks – notebooks are meant for “data creation” whilst tablets are best for “data consumption”. Indeed, the fun factor and touchscreen controls of a tablet help to make the device more fit for reading or movie watching than typing or spreadsheet processing.

Shih also hinted at possibilities of Asus Windows 8 tablets. He claimed that Windows 8 could allow the Transformers tablet lineup to be both a data creation and data consumption device.

Still, the 3 million to 6 million shipment goal is a massive jump from just 1.8 million Asus tablets shipped for 2011. The company is likely expecting a healthy demand for its already highly anticipated Transformer Prime tablet, which was sold out in online pre-orders on Amazon within a couple of weeks.

Asus is expecting total revenue for 2012 to be $16.6 billion, a 40 percent increase from 2012, says CENS. In total, Asus is looking to ship about 22 to 25 million notebooks and tablets for all of 2012.

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