Asustek’s Goals for Netbooks, S101s

Asus Eee PC S101 According to sources that DigiTimes has talked to, as well as Asustek’s president, Asustek has some very ambitious plans for the new 10.2″ Asus Eee PC S101 as well as their netbooks in general.

Asustek Computer believes they can ship 50,000 S101s this month (a pretty impressive price – they are talking upwards of $35 million USD in revenue). This is before the S101 has even been launched in Japan or Europe (which is set to happen later this month). Asustek’s President, Jerry Shen, thinks the S101 will account for around 10% of Eee PCs that are shipped by the end of 2008, and that overall they’ll ship 700,000 Eee PCs (from 7″ through 10″) in October of 2008.

Shen also mentioned that up through September, 3.4 million Eee PCs were shipped. This ties into their goals of passing Dell in China and Lenovo in worldwide markets sometime next year.

Shen also said that they won’t be making Eee PCs in an 11″ form factor (probably due to a lack of cheap 11″ LCD panels). They are reaching the point where they are outsourcing some Eee PC production (Foxconn Electronics / Hon Hai Precision Industry) and are in talks with EMS (which could make already-available models). Newer Eee PC models will probably be made by Pegatron Technology.

Two more versions of the S101 will launch by the end of this month. Both will be running Linux, and there will be a 32GB SSD version at $699 USD and a 64GB SSD version at $799 – $899 USD. There will also be two new models between the S101 and the Eee PC 1000, with prices of around $550 – $585 USD.

Read: DigiTimes