Asus

ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated

SUBMITTED BY:AMRIT SINGHANIA ROLL NO: 18063.

ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology. As a leading company in the new digital era, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.

HISTORY Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh, and MT Liao founded ASUS in 1989 in Taipei, Taiwan — all four founders worked as computer engineers for Acer. The company explains the name ASUS as originating from Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The new organization used only the last four letters of the word to give the resulting name a high position in alphabetical listings.

Asus is a company that produces a variety of computer components for leading manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, as well as PDAs and notebook computers. On January 3, 2008, Asus split into three separate companies, ASUStek, Pegatron and Unihan.

ABOUT ASUS In 2007, one in three desktop PCs sold was powered by an ASUS motherboard; and the company’s 2007 revenues reached US$6.9 billion. ASUS products' top quality stems from product development. It's like learning Chinese Kung-Fu; one must begin with cultivating the "Chi" and inner strength. Besides innovating cutting-edge features, ASUS engineers also pay special attention to EMI (electromagnetic interference), thermal, acoustics and details that usually go unnoticed to achieve complete customer satisfaction. ASUS notebooks are the first TCO'99-certified notebooks worldwide. The requirements for this honor include radiation emission control, energy (battery consumption), ecology (environment friendly) and ergonomics. To succeed in this ultracompetitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service. That's why all 8,000 over employees of ASUS strive for the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services. With unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, ASUS won 2,568 awards in 2007,

meaning on average, the company received over 7 awards every day last year. BusinessWeek has ranked ASUS amongst its“InfoTech 100” for the 10th straight year; and the company is ranked as No.1 in quality products and services by the Wall Street Journal. ASUS has also achieved the number one title on the annual league table of Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands with a brand value of 11.96 billion US dollars.

VISION & VALUES:

Corporate Vision:

Imagine innovations that simplify our lives and enable us to realize our full potential. It is technologies' responsibility to accommodate us, not the other way around, because all devices should perform and communicate seamlessly anytime, anywhere. ASUS thrives to become an integrated 3C solution provider. (Computer, Communications, Consumer electronics.)

Mission and Value:

•

As a major player of the IT industry, ASUS has established its corporate mission: Provide innovative IT solutions that empower people and businesses reaching their full potential. The philosophy of ASUS product development is to do the fundamentals well first before moving forward. Started with computer components such as motherboards, graphic cards, and optical storage devices, ASUS now has now over 16 product lines, including desktop barebone systems, servers, notebooks, handhelds, network devices, broadband communications, LCD monitors, TVs, wireless applications, and CPT (chassis, power supply and thermal) products.

Management Philosophy :

Inspire, motivate and nurture our employees to explore their highest potential •

Commit to integrity and diligence; focus on fundamentals and results

•

Endlessly pursue to be number 1 in the areas of quality, speed, service, innovation and cost-efficiency

•

Strive to be among the world-class high-tech leaders and to provide valuable contributions to humanity..

COMPETITORS: Competitive analysis of the Fonera 2.0 vs Belkin, Linksys, Asus and D-Link Below is a comparison table listing features and prices of the Fonera 2.0 and its closest competitors. Companies like ASUS, Planex, D-Link, Belkin and Linksys all sell wireless routers with USB ports and storage features, but none of these provides the same functionality as the Fonera 2.0 and none can match its 49€ price. This makes the Fonera 2.0 the best deal on the market if you are looking for a smart router that not only gives you wifi, but also allows you to share hard drives, printers and webcams in your network and delegate your downloading and uploading activities to an inexpensive tiny router, letting you keep your PC off while downloading at night, helping you save money and reduce carbon emissions. The closest competitors for the Fonera 2.0 are WiFi routers from Planex and ASUS that let you download files from BitTorrent to a USB hard drive and share a printer on your network. Both

lack most of the Fonera 2.0’s features, like Youtube, Flickr and Picasa uploaders, out-of-the-box support for 3G modems and the Megaupload and Rapidshare downloaders. Both ASUS and Planex products let you stream your files to iTunes equipped PCs or media devices and we’ll soon release the same iTunes server functionality for the Fonera 2.0. On top of that, the Fonera 2.0, like a normal Fonera, lets you share some of your bandwidth at home, make some money with your WiFi connection and roam the world for free. This unique feature is not available in any other router. The Fonera continues to be the only social router in the world. Planex BitTorrent routers are hard to find in Europe or the US (or at least I couldn’t find recent pricing information for them), while the ASUS WL-500g Premium and its bigger brother, the WL-700 (equipped with a 250GB drive), cost respectively around 100€ and 220€. The other routers in the table provide only basic file sharing features and nonetheless all cost more then our Fonera 2.0. The Belkin N+ router and D-Link DIR-855 offer greater coverage thanks to the 802.11n standard, that the Fonera 2.0 (which is 802.11g) can beat using our Fontennas. We decided to keep the price of the Fonera low by not including a hard drive as there are 1 tera HDD now for only 99 euros. The Fonera works best with a USB 2.0 hub so you can combine pen drives, hard drives, web cams, 3G dongles, or whatever USB device you fancy.

Relationship with Intel: In the early 1990s, Taiwan-based motherboard manufacturers had not yet established their leading positions in the computer hardware business. Intel would supply any new processors to

more established companies like IBM first, and the Taiwanese companies would have to wait for approximately six months after IBM received their engineering prototypes. When Intel released its 486 as engineering samples, ASUS decided to design its own 486 motherboard without having a 486-processor engineering sample on site, using only the technical details published by Intel and the experience they gained while making the 386-compatible motherboards. When ASUS finalized its 486 motherboard prototype, they took it to Intel's base in Taiwan for testing. Unsurprisingly, they received no formal greeting when they arrived. It turned out that Intel's own 486 motherboard prototype had encountered design flaws, and Intel's engineers were rectifying it. The ASUS founders exercised their experience with the 486 and had a look at Intel's malfunctioning motherboard. Their solution worked, to the Intel engineers' surprise. Intel then tested the ASUS prototype, which functioned perfectly. This marked the beginning of an informal relationship between the two companies – ASUS now receives Intel engineering samples ahead of its competitors. ASUS has become one of the main supporters of Intel's Common Building Block initiatives.

PRODUCTS

ASUS also produces components for other manufacturers, including: • • • • • •

Apple Inc. (iPod, iPod Shuffle, MacBook) Alienware Falcon Northwest Palm, Inc. HP Sony Computer Entertainment (Playstation 3)

Manufacturing facilities and service centers As of 2009 ASUS has manufacturing facilities in: • • • •

Taiwan (Taipei, Lujhu, Nankan, Gueishan) Mainland China (Suzhou) Mexico (Juarez) Czech Republic (Ostrava)

Asus claims a monthly production capacity of two million motherboards and 150,000 notebook computers. The ASUS Hi-Tech Park, located in Suzhou, China, covers 540,000 square meters, roughly the size of 82 soccer fields. ASUS operates 50 service sites in 32 countries and has over 400 service partners worldwide. It provides support in 37 languages.

Sub-brands Eee Since its launch in October 2007, the Eee PC netbook has garnered numerous awards, including Forbes Asia’s Product of the Year, Stuff Magazine’s Gadget of the Year and Computer of the Year, NBC.com’s Best Travel Gadget, Computer Shopper's Best Netbook of 2008, PC Pro's Hardware of the Year, PC World's Best Netbook, and DIME magazine’s 2008 Trend Award Winner. ASUS has since added several products to its Eee lineup, including Eee Box, a compact nettop, Eee Top, an all-in-one touchscreen computer housed in an LCD monitor enclosure, and Eee Stick, a plug-and-play wireless controller for the PC platform that translates users’ physical hand motions into corresponding movements onscreen. On March 6, 2009, Asus debuted its Eee Box B202, which PCMag saw as "the desktop equivalent of the Asus EeePC". With its price range between US$269 and US$299, this desktop competes directly with the Apple Mac Mini.

Corporate restructuring or Diversification: In January 2008 ASUS started restructuring its operations. The company will split into three distinct operational units: ASUS, Pegatron, and Unihan. The ASUS brand will apply solely to first-party branded computers. Pegatron will handle motherboard and component OEM manufacturing. Unihan will focus on non-PC manufacturing such as cases and molding.

In the process of restructuring, the highly criticized pension-plan restructuring effectively zeroed out the current pension balances. The company paid out all contributions previously made by employees.

REASONS FOR DIVERSIFICATION: Why are organizations going through diversification? The answers are Globalization, International competition, the spread of information technology. All of these factors have escalated competition and the need to change in order to maintain competitive. The purposes of ASUS diversification are given below. 

Use of expertise and knowledge: The main purpose of diversification of ASUS is to use the expertise and knowledge gained in one business by diversifying into a business where it can be used in a related way.



Builds synergy: value added by corporate office adds up to more than the value if different businesses in the portfolio were separate and independent. It one of the major reasons of ASUS diversification.



Gain market power relative to competitors: ASUS have very tough competitors, so to gain market share ASUS have to go for product diversification.



Reduce the risk: one of the objectives of diversification of ASUS is to reduce the huge risk on a single product.



Marketing: After diversification the company can reduce their marketing cost by doing some promotional activity for the company. It will help to gain mileage for all the products of ASUS.



Distribution channels: ASUS can use their existing distribution channels and also the distribution channels of those companies which ASUS took over to sell their whole product range.



Economies of scope: By successful sharing of its resources and capabilities or transferring one or more corporate-level core competencies that were developed in one of its businesses to another of its businesses ASUS can reduce the total cost of operation.

So, by this we can say that diversification is showing a positive sign. Open Handset Alliance: On 9 December 2008, the Open Handset Alliance announced that ASUSTek Computer Inc. had become one of 14 new members of the organization. These "new members will either deploy compatible Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of Android-based devices."

Timeline: • • • • • •

• • •

• • • •

• • •

2002: Formed subsidiary ASRock. September/October 2003: debuts in the cellphone market with the J100 model. September 2005: releases their first PhysX accelerator card. December 2005: enters the LCD TV market with the TLW32001 model, initially only available on the Taiwan market. January 2006: ASUS announced that it would cooperate with Lamborghini to develop its VX series. March 9, 2006: ASUS announced as one of the producers of the first Microsoft Origami models, together with Samsung and Founder. Samsung and ASUS devices expected by April 2006. August 8, 2006: announced joint venture with Gigabyte Technology. June 5, 2007: ASUS announced the Eee PC at COMPUTEX Taipei 2007. September 9, 2007: ASUS started to support Blu-Ray by announcing the release of a BDROM/DVD writer PC drive, BC-1205PT. The release of several Blu-Ray based notebooks followed. October 31, 2007: launched a PDA/smartphone range to the UK market. January 3, 2008: ASUS formally splits into three companies: ASUSTeK, Pegatron and Unihan. May 2008: Incompatibility of ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard with Windows XP SP3 first discovered August 2008: ASUS refuses to accept responsibility, or provide support, for the incompatibility between its A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard and Windows XP SP3, thereby tacitly refusing to guarantee that any of its manufactured components' will remain compatible throughout the entire lifespan of a given Windows platform (in this case, the widely-used Windows XP operating system). August 12, 2008: ASUS creates a new motherboard (ZT23) capable of clocking a processing speed of 120GHz, a record August 22, 2008: details of the N10 leaked online December 2008: ASUS quietly, and without apology, releases a beta BIOS update that potentially fixes the Windows XP SP3 incompatibility with the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard. Registered consumers of the motherboard receive no notification of the release. The company website's software-update service urges users only to update to this version if their systems display relevant symptoms.

FINANCIAL IMPACT: Revenue

▲ US$ 22.9 billion (2008 [1])

Net income

▲$0.84 billion USD (2008 [1])

ASUS appears in BusinessWeek’s "InfoTech 100" and "Asia’s Top 10 IT Companies" rankings. It is the number one in quality and service according to Wall Street Journal Asia and leads the IT Hardware category of the 2008 Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands survey with a total brand value of US$1.324 billion

After diversification ASUS is showing Revenue Maximisation.

Corporate responsibility Green ASUS In 2000 Asus officially launched Green ASUS, a company-wide sustainable computing initiative overseen by a steering committee led by Jonney Shih, the Chairman of ASUSTek Computer Inc. Green ASUS pursues what the company calls the "Four Green Home Runs", namely: "Green Design, Green Procurement, Green Manufacturing, and Green Service and Marketing".

Green ASUS measures • • • • •

As of 2009 Green ASUS restricts 37 hazardous substances, 31 more than the 6 stipulated by the European Union RoHS. ASUS designs its notebooks to meet Energy Star standards. As of 2009 over 50 ASUS notebooks have Energy Star certification. In 2005, ASUS launched Taiwan’s first GPMS (Green Product Management System) information-technology platform. In 2006, ASUS became the first computer manufacturer in Taiwan to develop an easy-toreuse and easy-to-recycle end-of-life "green design" system. In September 2006, ASUS initiated a free take-back program for all ASUS-manufactured products in the USA.

Recognition In 2006 ASUS obtained IECQ (IEC Quality Assessment System for Electronic Components) HSPM (Hazardous Substance Process Management) certification for its headquarters and all of its manufacturing sites.

In 2007 oekom research AG (an independent research institute specializing in corporate responsibility assessment) recognized ASUS as a "highly environmental friendly company" in the Computers and Peripherals Industry. In October 2008, ASUS received 11 EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) Gold Awards for its products, including four of its N-Series notebooks, namely the N10, N20, N50 and N80. In the following month, it received EU Flower certification for the same NSeries notebooks at an award ceremony held in Prague. In December 2008, Det Norske Veritas conferred the world’s first EuP (Energy-using Product) certification for portable notebooks on these machines.

Recycling campaign In April 2008, ASUS launched its "PC Recycling for a Brighter Future" program in collaboration with Intel and Tsann Kuen Enterprise. This program collected more than 1,200 desktop computers, notebooks and CRT/LCD monitors, refurbished them and donated them to 122 elementary and junior high schools, five aboriginal communities and the Tzu Chi Stem Cell Center.

Key Dates 1989: Asus founded 2003: Debuts their J100 model cellphone 2005: Released first PhysX Accelerator 2005: Enters the LCD Market with the TLW32001 model 2006: Asus and Gigabyte form joint venture 2007: Announces the Eee PC 7. 2007: Announces release of BD-ROM/DVD writer PC drive, BC-1205PT 8. 2008: Breaks into three companies, ASUStek, Pegatron and Unihan 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.