Samsung may not be a huge player in the laptop market right now, but it looks the company has plans to graduate to the big leagues in 2011.
According to Digitimes, the company is looking to increasing shipments of its laptop computers by 60 per cent year-on-year in 2011. This would take notebook sales from around ten million in 2010 to between 16 and 17 million units globally.
It would also be a meteoric rise for the company, which only broke into the global top-ten at the start of 2009. Over the first three quarters of 2010, Samsung was the eighth largest notebook manufacturer overall, but trailed seventh place Apple by only a few hundred thousand units. If the electronics-giant manages to achieve its goals, it will match or exceed sixth-place ASUS' projected 2010 shipments, although its Taiwanese rival also intends to gain significant ground in 2011.
According to the source, Samsung's manufacturing capabilities may be the key to hitting these impressive targets. The company already manufactures 2D and 3D notebook panels, memory, hard-drives and CMOS sensors, giving it control over a large part of its own supply chain.
Furthermore, the company's success in areas such as the mobile phone market suggests that it has the ability to take what it wants. In only a few years, Samsung's market share has bloomed as it fully embraced the smartphone. From what we saw at CES, the company has similar plans for its laptops, introducing a number of innovative and desirable machines designed to try and take the market by storm.
