ASUS defied trends in an overall downward trend in PC builders by posting healthy results for its spring quarter. Its net earnings were up five percent to $124 million and its net profit climbed to $242 million based on better than anticipated notebook and tablet sales. Despite being a veteran of netbooks, its operating profit margin also grew to 5.9 percent, its highest in almost three years.
Exact sales figures aren’t yet public. Escaped details have suggested it was shipping 300,000 tablets a month, most of those its well-received Android 3 headliner, the Eee Pad Transformer. While less than a tenth of Apple’s 9.25 million iPads shipped during its own spring quarter, it’s strong enough to have blown past larger competitors that haven’t received any traction. Motorola moved just 440,000 Xooms in its most recent quarter while RIM managed 500,000 PlayBooks.
The results contrast sharply with ASUS’ main Taiwan-area rival, Acer. It posted a $234 million loss, its first quarterly loss, and has been bleeding overall share even with its own tablet family. Unlike Acer, ASUS hasn’t tried to dismiss tablets as a temporary fad and has multiple tablets in its pipeline. Its next closest is the Eee Pad Slider, an all-in-one parallel to the Transformer that’s due to ship in the very near future.
