It’s nice to know that if you don’t like what top executives at Asus have to say about smartbooks, netbooks, or tablets, you need only wait a week or two, and the strategic sands will have shifted. We thought Asus (Asustek) chairman Jonney Shih was pretty clear in his wait-and-see-on-tablets statement in late January. But CEO Jerry Shen (pictured) put a stronger emphasis on tablets in a Feb. 5 analyst call. Confused? So are we.
If we treat the Shen doctrine as the latest word, Asus will have an e-reader called Eee Book on display at the Computex Taipei 2010 trade show in early June, and will follow with a tablet-based PC in the second half of the year. This contradicts Shih’s observation that an Asus tablet, while already in prototype, would await market acceptance before being brought into production. Maybe the fanatical response to Apple’s Jan. 27 press announcement changed the minds of Asus executives.
Then again, Shen had gone slightly bonkers about the prospects of a $185 smartbook in late October, only two months after saying the smartbook category seemed a bit moribund. Shen made no promises on smartbook production in the Feb. 5 conference call, but seemed to suggest the company would have products in distribution channels within the calendar year, and that t 2010 would be the year for smartbooks.
An endorsement like that could be an important market justification for smartbooks, but we’d better take the temperature at Asus in early March. A lot could change in three weeks’ time.
Loring
