• Tweet
• Email

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.