FPSLabs : ASUS Eee brand expands, sells out

Posted by Thomas Gribble in February 6th, 2008

Posted in: Latest

Eee PC is huge in Europe and will soon have a few new family members to share its success with.

ASUS has recently announced that it will expand the Eee product line to various other market segments. This likely stems from the desire to capitalize on the massive success the Eee PC 7” notebook has endured since its launch. The Eee PC launched in the US in October 2007 to a fairly warm media reception. The tiny, $300 notebook was heralded for its relatively robust feature set, open source software, and obviously compact size. There are now several different SKUs of the ASUS Eee PC, all of which are presumably selling quite well.

[ArticleAdvert]

Made available just a few weeks ago in Europe, the Eee PC has reportedly sold out. ASUS has also just offered up sales numbers for Europe, stating that it has sold 20,000 of the tiny notebooks. Consumers in Europe had been anxiously awaiting the launch of the Eee PC on their continent, as the device was available for more than two months in the US and even longer in Taiwan.

ASUS has also recently announced plans to extend the Eee brand to other components, including desktop PCs, all-in-one PCs, and LCD TVs. The desktop variant of the Eee PC, to be called the E-DT, will feature similar hardware components to the notebook and have a target price of $199. The original Eee PC also had a target price of $199, but the product eventually entered the market at $299, where it has remained. The E-Monitor all-in-one computer, similar to what we have seen with the Gateway One, Dell XPS One (hey guys lets get a bit more original with our names), and Apple iMac, is to have a base price of $499 while sharing the same components as the E-DT. This leads us to believe that ASUS will be incorporating a worthy size screen for the E-Monitor, but details on that are not currently available. Rounding out the new product group is an LCD TV named, big surprise, the E-TV. This HDTV-ready LCD TV will be 42″ initially and features an integrated PC of some sort. We don’t know exactly what the PC portion of the TV does or how this really differentiates the product from the E-Monitor (besides the obvious screen size advantages and probably greater range of inputs), but the E-TV is to be offered at just a $200 ($199) premium over similarly-sized and featured LCD TVs.

We would really love to see a touchscreen Eee PC, as the dwarfed keyboard and touchpad on the Eee PC can be frustrating during long or hurried sessions. Unfortunately ASUS has determined through research that the demand for this feature is not high enough to warrant its development, so previous plans for the touchscreen have been put on hold.

Source: Dailytech

Popularity: 2% [?]

Support FPSLabs! Share and Enjoy: