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| Asus may not reach its 2015 sales target because of Xiaomi |
Asus is expected to ship around 8 million smartphones this year,
according to "Taiwan-based supply chain makers". The company's ZenFone
line has proven quite successful in its home country, but also in
Southeast Asia. It's now set on doing well in Russia, Brazil, and even
the UK with its wares.
Asus wants to sell 16 million smartphones in 2015, which would
represent a 100% jump over 2014, if it pans out. It won't be easy,
though, because of increasing competition in the affordable handset
space, especially by Xiaomi.
The Chinese company, that has become the world's third biggest
smartphone maker, is keeping prices for its products extremely low in
the mainland - making it harder for Asus to compete.
Asus' smartphone business is currently losing money, but if it does
manage to sell 16 million units next year, then it should finally become
profitable. The company will unveil new members for its ZenFone family
at CES 2015 in early January. Among those devices we're apparently going
to see a 5.5-inch phone, which was created to satisfy demand for this
specific size.
Asus is selling the 5-inch ZenFone 5 and the 6-inch ZenFone 6 (pictured above), but hasn't had anything in between those sizes so far.
While all of the new ZenFones that it will announce at CES will be
powered by Intel chipsets just like their predecessors, Asus is going to
start working with another chip maker too in the future. The company
didn't name this new supplier, but it will apparently enable it to
produce cheaper devices than those with Intel inside. So we assume we're
talking about MediaTek here.
The new Intel-powered ZenFones will have the starting price of TWD
9,990, which means around $325 or €261. On the other hand, those cheaper
versions with parts from the yet-unnamed chip maker will start at just
TWD 4,990 - so $162 or €130.
Source 1 • Source 2
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