Asus lower shipment estimates for Eee netbooks thanks to iPad

Asus is not doing well with its netbook shipments right now. The company has been shipping tons of the small machines, but over the last few months the netbook market overall has started softening as the market matures. The improving economy also means that more consumers have the extra money to buy a normal notebook rather than a netbook. One other big reasons that shipments of netbooks for Asus are slowing is the iPad.



Asus has announced that it has been forced to reduce its shipping estimates for netbook for the year. Asus has reduced its target shipment for its Q3 to 1.4 million units. That announcement came from an investor's conference on August 13 and was made by Asus CEO Jerry Shen. Asus also announced at the time that it was reducing its overall financial outlook for the year due to decreased shipments of mainboards, notebooks, and netbooks.

The decline is shipments resulted in Asus posting a decline in performance compared to Q2. Shen also reminded investors that Asus was getting into the tablet market. Asus has a $399 Android tablet coming to market along with a $1000 tablet running Windows. The downside is that those machines are not expected to hit the market until around December. In the meantime, Apple is selling all the iPads it can build and still can't meet the demand for the tablet.