The economy is taking its toll on everyone. Even Asus which made great strides in 2008 thanks to the introduction of a number of low cost computers that appealed to budget-conscious consumers, is feeling the pinch. DigiTimes reports that the company plans to announce a reorganization plan soon which will merge resources from different departments, reduce manpower in some divisions, and reduce the number of models in the Eee PC lineup.

Right now Asus offers a huge number of Eee PC computers, including the Eee PC 701, 900, 901, 904, 1000, 1002, and S101 series netbooks. And each of those models comes in a number of different flavors, with some sporting solid state disks while others use hard drives. Some models use the Intel Celeron CPU while others rely on the newer and more efficient Intel Atom chipset.

It’s not clear at the moment which models Asus will be eliminating, or what exactly DigiTimes means when it says the company will “shrink its Eee PC lineup into only four series.” It’s possible that Asus could simply eliminate the older Eee PC 701 and 900 series devices and adjust the model numbers of more recent devices while still continuing to offer a variety of configuration options for each.

Or maybe Asus could phase out some netbooks that haven’t gained as much traction. For instance, the Eee PC 1000H has gotten a lot of attention in 2008 for its decent build quality, strong feature set, and relatively low price. While I’m not privy to sales figures, I don’t think the Eee PC 1000 which has a solid state disk instead of a hard drive and tends to cost more than the Eee PC 1000H has done as well. Perhaps Asus will phase out the 1000?

Update: I contacted Asus for comment on this story, and was told that the company has no comment at this time.

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9 replies on “Asus to consolidate Eee PC line”

  1. Consolidating their netbook lineup is probably necessary in order for them cut production and development cost. However I would see them still keeping a 70x and 90x model available as those are what they originally built the netbook craze on and are still popular.

  2. As you say “right now Asus offers over a huge number of Eee PC computers” and I always thought that they had too many, it was so hard to know the difference between them.

    I think this is a wise move and they should have 3 to 5 models and that is it.

    Gary

  3. Weren’t there some hotly denied rumours about this a couple of months back?

    So long as they don’t dump the “spirit of the netbook” sized models, I’ll be happy. But that’s not the direction they’re going at the moment, so if any are for the chop they sadly will be, so they can standardise on component size if nothing else.

  4. It’s about damn time. Any sane company would offer a small number of base models (usually based on the case), and different configurations therein.

    Oh well – now that the HP 2140 is out, why buy anything else? 😉

    1. Why buy anything else?

      Size, for one. Other than that, I’m with you. It’s a sweet looking machine.

    2. Because it supposely starts at $500 and it has a massive protuberance on the bottom with the 6-cell battery.

      1. True, but some might like the jacked up typing angle that results… or lump it.

  5. Asus could drop a few models and nobody would notice. They have dozens of variations at the moment.

Comments are closed.