Asus to make grab for Toshiba's notebook biz?

Top-three vendor ranking to follow

By James Sherwood • Get more from this author

16th November 2009 14:14 GMT

Asus may seek to acquire Toshiba’s notebook business in order to become the world’s third-largest laptop manufacturer, the Taiwanese firm has said.

Outspoken company chief Johnny Shih said Toshiba’s notebook business has been identified as one of Asus’ possible targets, according to a report by Chinese-language website Commercial Times, as cited by Digitimes.

Asus has already had contact of some sort with Toshiba, Shih reportedly added, but nothing has been finalised.

Toshiba shipped 2.8m notebooks worldwide during the first quarter of 2009, according to market watcher Display Search, while Asus shipped just 800,000.

HP currently rules the global notebook market, but second-place Acer has already said it hopes to overtake HP in 2010 by shipping in excess of 40m notebooks during the calendar year.

The global notebook PC market was worth an estimated $26.4bn (£15.5bn/€17.6bn) during Q2 2009, according to Display Search figures. ®