With weaker-than-expected performance in profitability in 2015, Asustek Computer continues to be impacted by slow seasonality. Revenues are expected to decrease 16-18% sequentially in the first quarter, and remain flat from the same quarter a year ago, according to market watchers. However, Asustek pointed out that so far its operations are still on track with its expectations, but it will stay cautious about its plans and will strictly control its costs as the global economy is still in a downturn.

Asustek announced consolidated revenues of NT$35.39 billion (US$1.07 billion) for February, up 0.3% on month and 1.7% on year, while combined consolidated revenues for the first two months of 2016 were NT$64.78 billion, up 1.7% on year.

Asustek expects its March revenues to grow modestly on month and will ship 4.8 million notebooks in the first quarter, flat from a year ago, but down 11% sequentially, while its smartphone shipments will reach four million units, up one million from the same quarter a year ago, but down 2.5 million from the fourth quarter of 2015.

With oil prices and exchange rates returning stable, Asustek is seeing demand from Russia and Eastern Europe starting to recover, but is aiming to achieve flat performance on year in 2016 as the global economy still has many uncertainties.

Market watchers expect Asustek's first-quarter revenues to reach around NT$102-103 billion and revenues in March will reach NT$37 billion.

Asustek expect its tablet shipments to reach around one million units, down from 1.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015 and shipments in 2016 will reach 5-6 million units. The company is planning to ship 20 million notebooks and 2-4 million desktops in 2016 and 500,000 desktops in the first quarter.

Because of the delay for its next-generation ZenFone 3 smartphones from April to June at Computex 2016, Asustek internally expects its smartphone sales to turn weak in the first half, and is aiming to ship 25-30 million units in 2016.

Asustek recently updated its ZenWatch 2 with Android Wear 6.0 and now features a Chinese user interface and several new functions.