Industry bits: Asus layoffs, Quanta gains traction in netbooks

Here are a few stories I came across this weekend about the companies that make our beloved mini-laptops.

Earlier this year Asus announced plans to layoff several hundred workers as part of an effort to save money and restructure the business. While those layoffs were delayed a bit, DigiTimes reports that by the end of July, as many as 500 Asus employees will be gone.

Netbooks help Quanta stay competitive

Business Week has an interview with Quanta Computers chairman Barry Lam about the company’s growth in the age of netbooks. Quanta partnered with Nicholas Negroponte on the first OLPC XO Laptop, and has been working with Acer and other computer makers on consumer oriented netbooks. Quanta’s earnings rose by 10% in 2008.

Computex rumors

Sascha from Netbook News.de is in Taiwan in advance of the Computex trade show, and he’s picked up a few intriguing rumors about devices that could be on display. That includes an Asus Eee PC prototype built around a Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU instead of the Intel Atom processor, an NVIDIA ION demonstration using a VIA Nano CPU instead of Intel Atom, and Disney-branded netbook. These are just rumors, so take them all with a grain of salt. Or a few tablespoons. Your choice.

Posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009, 3:07 pm by Brad Linder

Steven522

I am an Intel fan from way back. I never had any luck with AMD chips or any other non-Intel that came along. However, if the rumor about the NVIDIA/VIA teamup is true, I say “good deal”. What little access I have had, as far a VIA processors go, has been very positive. I am even thinking the next PC build I do will center around a low-power VIA chip for a “greener” system.
Mithinco

VIA Nano and Nvidia Ion will teach Intel a lesson.
Mikez

Like: “Publicly documented hardware is a good thing”?
Intel already knows that, VIA and NVIDIA still have to learn it.
TrackSmart

What do you mean by “luck”? I'm not a fanboy of any particular chip maker, but your comment just sounds a little odd. Intel and AMD have both come out with great chips over the years.

They've also had chips that were put in places they shouldn't have been (i.e. desktop Pentium 4 processors in laptop computers – I can still feel the burns on my legs…)
http://www.tech-no-media.com/ erlik

What I am most interested in is the arrival of netbooks with the ARM based Qualcomm snapdragon. These kind of machines have been announced for some time ( http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/05/netbook-pr… ) but this would be the first device officially announced with an actual prototype available.
I think that netbooks based on the snapdragon can utterly defeat the machines based on atom and pineview processors in the cheap netbook market.
Also snapdragon is a much cooler name than Pineview….

Industry bits: Asus layoffs, Quanta gains traction in netbooks

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