Asus is preparing to sell 5 million Eee PCs this year, up from 300,000 in the second half of last year. But "nearly two-thirds of its Eee PCs shipped this year will be Windows-based as consumers embrace the company's low-cost laptop models," says Reuters. So far,
Sales have been the strongest in Europe, followed by Asia Pacific and China, said Lillian Lin, Asustek's head of marketing.
"There is a huge untapped computer market out there, and we want to get into the next 10 billion consumer market (with these lower cost computers)," said Davis Tsai, President of Microsoft Taiwan.
Presumably you can get to 10 billion if most people on the planet buy two machines.... or maybe it's just a misprint.
Still, unlike my old mate Glyn Moody, Microsoft sees subnotebooks as being more of an opportunity than a threat. It all hinges on how much it makes when someone buys a subnotebook as well as a notebook PC, and how much it loses when the subnotebook really is a lost notebook or desktop sale. (And if it's wrong, it will have to try extra-hard to get users to sign up for Hotmail etc.)
Meanwhile Computerworld has a comparison review of the Eee PC (an Intel Classmate-type design) and the Everex Cloudbook (a VIA Nanobook design).
As mentioned on Ask Jack, the Packard-Bell EasyNote XS is already around as a Nanobook design.
