14 DAY TRIAL // While Asus' Eee PC netbooks are among the most affordable portable computing systems out there (both in terms of price and actual performance), it seems that the Taiwan-based company plans to actually take things to a whole new level, by making these tiny mobile companions even more affordable.
So, as Digitimes reports, it seems that ASUS might be planning to roll out a 200 – 250 US dollars Eee PC netbook this June, running on Intel hardware.
Apparently, this low-cost netbook has been designed in order to counter the increasing level of popularity enjoyed by Internet tablets (Apple's iPad and iPad 2, in particular), by undercutting their price point and offering roughly the same user experience, if not even a better one.
The same sources seems to indicate that, in order to achieve such a low price point without seriously affecting its own profit margins, ASUS will have to do something about the OS running on this low-power, ultra-portable computing system, and it seems that the adoption of Google's Chrome OS (or who knows, maybe even Android 3.0 – Honeycomb), might be the solution of choice.
This piece of info is actually quite likely, given the fact that several previous reports seem to indicate ASUS as one of Google's partners in manufacturing future low-power netbooks running the search engine giant's new operating system.
Apparently, ASUS will be getting some serious support from Intel, who desperately needs to push its Atom chips, whose popularity has seriously decreased lately, with the advent of ARM-based solutions, as well as devices built on Qualcomm platforms.
Of course, for the time being, we're only talking about rumors and speculations, but we're eagerly looking forward to seeing whether ASUS will really manage to pull this off or not, and whether a low-cost netbook running the Chrome OS will actually manage to stand a chance against the wave of tablets currently invading the market.