While we mourn the fact that
Microsoft’s Xbox won’t se a price cut, at least we’ll be saving some
pennies during the credit crunch with ever cheaper netbooks, if Asus
are to be believed.
The eee pc manufacturer reckons that new
models of its famous tiny laptop could go as low as £125 next year.
Asus president Jerry Shen said that a new entry-level version of the
eee pc would be retailing for around $200.
Shen also said that
he hoped his company would gain a 30 per cent share of the tiny
notebook market in the next twelve months. Asus shipped 2.5 million
units in the first six months of 2008, and is expected to shift around
six million by the end of the year.
The market for these ickle
computers is fierce and with that in mind the company plans to phase
out the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Eee PCs in favour of 10-inch models. Around
70 per cent of Asus’ Eee PCs shipped with a traditional hard disk,
compared to 30 per cent which featured solid state drives. This
mirrored in the OS’s shipped with PCs with 70 per cent featuring
Windows XP while the rest shipped with Linux.
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