One of the largest computer components maker Elitegroup Computer Systems is very optimistic about next year and predicts its mainboard sales to grow 20% and notebook shipments to increase by 30% from 2003 next year. ECS is the second tier-one company from Taiwan after ASUSTeK Computer to officially speak about such serious sales boosts next year.

ECS’ president Ming-Tsun Chen told DigiTimes that the company would have additional orders from its OEM and ODM clients next year as well as enough manufacturing capacities to fulfill the demand for its products.

The company recently established its new plant through its owned subsidiary E-trend Technology. The foundry is located in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province (China) - next to ECS Manufacturing (ECSM). According to Chen, the new plant can house a maximum of 70 SMT lines with capacity to churn out the equivalent of two million mainboards a month. The company will install 10 SMT lines initially at the new plant to handle mainboard, DeskNote, notebook and mini-barebone system production. So far ECS has been manufacturing all of the mentioned in the ECSM plant in China that has 70 SMT lines.

According to the report, ECS mainboards shipments are likely to exceed 17 million units this year. It has shipped about 14 million mainboards as of the end of October. With 20% shipment growth, ECS is likely to ship over 20 million units next year.

ASUS targets to supply about 29 million units in total this year. In case ASUS manages to achieve this target in 2003 and succeeds in executing its growth plan of 20% in 2004, it will supply roughly 34.8 million of mainboards next year.

The combined shipments of own-brand notebooks and DeskNotes would be around 800 to 900 thousands units this year. The 30% growth would translate into 1.04 million to 1.17 million notebook shipments in 2004. ASUS’ target for notebook shipments is about 2.5 million of units in 2004.

In case growth predictions of the leading computer components makers are correct, we are going to see a serious growth of the market next year provided that smaller companies pick up with the same increases.