Asustek is a company with some serious goals. They intend to be one of the top three notebook vendors in the world, and they plan to accomplish this by 2011. While putting out one of the best lines of netbooks on the market is a good start, Asus knows they need to do more. Digitimes reports that the company is looking towards corporate acquisitions as a way to give themselves a boost.

Their first target appears to be Toshiba's notebook business. Asus has already had contact with the company and, while nothing is finalized, it sounds like this is an offer that both companies are taking seriously. Toshiba is a well-known brand, and having access to that name would be of substantial benefit to Asus.

Regardless of how this acquisition goes, I think Asustek has a good chance of accomplishing their goal. Perhaps not by 2011, but sometime in the near future. Asus had a net profit of $6.497 billion this quarter, more than double what was predicted. The company is growing fast, largely because they've been so good at predicting consumer buying trends.

Asus got into the netbook game early, and they had the strongest line-up of products when the craze first started to hit. Now that the market is more saturated, you'd expect their sales to dip a bit. Instead, sales are up and shipments in Q4 are likely to exceed their Q3 2009 sales. Asus knows what their customers want. As long as they don't forget that, they have a good chance of cementing a position at the head of the herd.