ASUS cuts back Eee PCs, only 350k sold in April, iPad is to blame. New 'killer' model coming soon

ASUS has felt some serious heat in its Eee PC line, mostly from tablet-based products like the iPad. ASUS sold just 350, 000 netbooks in April after tablets still "significantly impacted the demand". ASUS aren't taking this fight laying down, instead they're set to release a new "killer" Eee PC in June and also an ultra-budget model which should retail below $199.



No details of the new Eee PC have been made but rumors are that it might include a dual-core Atom N570 or an AMD Fusion-based processor. ASUS are hurting in sales and whilst notebook sales are still relatively strong (3.1 million shipped notebooks by the end of spring) it's nowhere near as good as the numbers we see from Apple. Netbook sales are set to drop below 1.3 million shipped in the winter and this is primarily because of the iPad.

ASUS of course have their amazing Eee Pad Transformer and this could well change the way we see ASUS as a company, but only shipping 300, 000 Transformers in June is sure to hurt. Once these numbers start pumping out, ASUS will have a definite one-two punch with both the pricing of the Transformer and it's Android-powered Honeycomb goodness.