Asustek sees 43 percent year-over-year net profit growth, thanks Android

We suspect many, if not all of the readers are well aware of the popularity of the Nexus 7. Not to mention the Transformer tablet lineup from Asus. But what many come as a bit of a surprise — Asustek has seen a rather significant increase in year-over-year net profit growth. A growth that the company is saying is in part due to strong tablet sales.
In fact, Asus noted that tablet shipments have almost tripled, going from 800,000 up to nearly 2.3 million. As a result, the company has recorded a 43 percent increase in net profits. Or in terms of dollars, $230 million as compared to $160 million from this time last year. The increase is based on the results from Q3 2011 and this quarter, Q3 2012. This is the largest quarterly profit increase from the company in more than four years.
Of course, while Android fans would probably like to think that the increase was based solely on Android tablet sales, the company also had an increase in notebook PC shipments to thank. Those notebook PC shipments — during the third quarter they were up 14 percent from the second quarter, up to five million units
Getting into some of the other numbers, Asus also recorded NT$1.18 billion in one-time foreign-exchange translation gains in the third quarter. That is compared with NT$75 million in losses from this time last year. Finally, revenue was up 9 percent, going from NT$102.04 billion up to NT$111.44 billion.

Read More

32GB Nexus 7 now available with Walmart

And just like that, Walmart has become the latest retailer to list the 32GB Nexus 7 tablet. The nice part with the Walmart listing — you can actually move forward and make the purchase. The tablet is priced (as we had been expecting), at $249. That being said, while the listing is active with Walmart — there is one small catch. That catch is with the shipping date, which is showing as being in early-November.
Looking over the listing does not offer much else in terms of surprise. The 32GB model joins the 16GB model, which is priced at $199. Of course, Walmart seems to have taken advantage of the shift in size and pricing and is now highlighting the 16GB model as a “rollback” that was previously priced at $249.
The one other point worth mentioning, the 32GB Nexus 7 does not appear to be available in many retail locations just yet. According to the product listing, you currently have the option to have it shipped to your home or to a local store for pickup. Upon moving through the checkout process, the free in store pickup notes the earliest in store delivery as being November 7 and the earliest home delivery as being November 6.
Given this Walmart listing, we are now wondering if Google is planning to quietly roll-out at least some of the products that were set for an announcement today.

Read More