Taiwanese PC manufacturer Asus seems to have hit a wall recently. The bold sales estimations in December last year seem now more difficult to achieve. Those who have been pessimistic about the sub-notebook might say that its success has come to an end.

According to some reports, the PC vendor has lowered the laptop shipment estimates for this first quarter of 2008. Asustek reported back in 2007 that the company plans to sell more than five million units during this year, with one million notebooks sold in the first quarter only. However, the company was forced to lower the initial estimations to 700,000 laptops, down 27 percent. Despite the fact that sales are not as expected, Asustek has nothing to worry about, since 700,000 units is almost double than the company managed to sell during the last quarter of 2007.

The new figures are the result of some problems Asus has encountered with the 8GB model, that has delayed it until the second quarter of the year. However, Asustek's estimations might need updating, since the second quarter will bring some serious competition from Acer, Gigabyte, MSI and Everex that will come with their own models of ultra-mobile notebooks.

The touchscreen-enabled Eee PC was supposed to bring some new features to the UMPC market, but Asustek decided that the model will not make it to the market. Asustek president Jerry Shen stated that "[Asustek's] market research has determined that touch screen is not a highly demanded feature for Eee PC customers". The project was put on hold until further notice. The announcement not only that shattered customers' dreams of a super-cheap tablet PC, but also diminished their trust into the company.

Asustek has recently announced that the company will build other products on top of Eee PC's architecture, such as the E-DT desktop computer, the E-TV and the E-Monitor, that will come with the same low prices that have turned the Eee PC into a market success.