Taiwanese netbook pioneer ASUSTeK is reportedly planning to design new netbooks and nettops featuring NVIDIA's widely acclaimed Ion platform. The company will initially launch a new Eee Box B1006, featuring NVIDIA's aforementioned Ion chipset. Slated for debut in the third quarter of this year, the new nettop will likely become a competitor for Acer's AspireRevo Ion-based desktop PC, the first computer system to incorporate the higher-performance nettop platform.

 

According to a recent news-article on Digitimes, citing sources in the industry, ASUS' Eee family could soon expand with the addition of a new NVIDIA Ion-based system. Although no specific details have been made available on a possible Eee Ion netbook, the company is said to be planning the launch of at least one Ion nettop, part of the Eee Box series. The aforementioned Eee Box B1006 will be built on the Ion platform and is scheduled to arrive in the third quarter of 2009.

 

There are no specific details regarding the form factor, pricing and specifications of the upcoming Ion-based systems, but ASUS is known for toying with the latest available hardware, in order to provide its consumers with a wide variety of systems. With the Ion platform, the company appears to have taken a more cautious approach, allowing its main competitor, Acer, to be the first to announce a new system built on the Ion chipset.

 

NVIDIA has been actively promoting its Ion platform since the beginning of this year, also indicating that about 40 Ion-based systems are expected to make their way onto the market, available in both nettop and netbook form factors. This platform has been designed to combine the low-power specifications of Intel's Atom platform with the graphics performance and features of NVIDIA's chipsets. The result has enabled system vendors to boost the performance of their latest systems, without raising the price bar too high.