Gartner: Eee sales high, but drawing competition

ASUS' fledgling Eee PC is doing extremely well, the company reports. It expects to sell over 400,000 systems by January, and at a tradeshow in Taipei last week, it sold out all 5,000 units it brought for the occasion. Targeted sales for 2008 could be in excess of 3.8 million. This very success could, however, become a problem for ASUS, notes the research firm Gartner. It has already attracted competition, such as from the Chinese company Hasee, which is building a stripped-down 13.3-inch laptop.

The Q540X will use a Celeron 540 processor, matched with an 80GB hard drive, at a total cost of $405 -- only $5 more than a comparable seven-inch Eee, InfoWorld writes. Everex, meanwhile, may soon be announcing the Cloudbook, another seven-inch system but with a 1.2GHz Via C7 CPU, DVI output, and a 30GB hard drive. This is expected to cost $399. For some buyers the real competition may be computers like the XO, which while meant for the Third World, may be extremely tempting at approximately $200. The least expensive Eee costs $247.

Filed under: computers
Other story tags: ASUS, OLPC, Everex, Cloudbook, Eee, XO, Hasee