Elitegroup Computer Systems, one of the world's largest producers of mainboards, would promote its laptops more aggressively as soon as the acquisition of Uniwill Computer Corp., a contract maker of notebooks, is completed, the company said on Tuesday. Besides, the company hopes to land orders from large notebook suppliers in the U.S. and Europe.

ECS currently ships about a million of notebooks a year, while Uniwill supplied about 1.8 million of mobile computers in 2005, which means that the combined company will have 2.8 million yearly output with further capacity expansion abilities, something crucially needed to compete against makers like Quanta, Compal and other large contract notebook producers.

While ECS has been making strides into notebook business for about five years now, it is still not very well known in the market of mobile computers. Back in 2001 the company acquired Alpha-Top manufacturer, which produced notebooks for companies like Apple Computer. But two years later – in mid-2003 – ECS sold the former Alpha-Top facility in Chungli, Taoyuan County in China to Asustek Computer, who then renamed it to Asusalpha. Later on, ECS' initiative to sell DeskNote-branded barebones failed, whereas its own-brand notebooks have not received widespread popularity.

Upon completion of the Uniwill acquisition, ECS Elitegroup will become a company with more than 400 research and development team members for notebook PC design. But with the help of the acquired Uniwill ECS hopes not only to boost quality and popularity of its notebooks, but also to land some orders from large companies.

Uniwill used to be only OEM/ODM, but now that they will be a part of ECS there will be some [ECS]-brand production as well. They will form ECS' research and development for notebooks and they will also bring ECS OEM deals.

But in addition to chances to grow, both ECS and Uniwill had to join forces to be more competitive against the larger manufacturers. Quanta and Compal are currently ranked as the world's No.1 and No.2 notebook makers in the world and are expected to ship 21 and 15 million of laptops during the year. Inventec Corp. and Wistron Corp. are projected to supply 10 million units each, which Asustek Computer plans to ship about 5 million notebooks.

Under the terms of the agreement, ECS Elitegroup will acquire Uniwill Computer in an all-stock swap where two shares of Uniwill Computer will be swapped for one share of ECS Elitegroup. The expected completion date of the acquisition is December 1, 2006 where ECS Elitegroup will issue 184 930 000 new shares at a share price of NT$19.05 ($0.58) to complete the deal, as detailed in the statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.