Netbook pioneer Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) is expected to showcase its Eee Pad at a press conference on May 31, the first device in what is believed will be a series of new “iPad killer” tablet PCs from Taiwanese makers.
At the press conference, held one day ahead of Computex Taipei — the world’s second-largest IT trade fair — the company said it would display innovations, including the Eee Pad, at the trade show, sources said.
“Our announcements [at the trade show] will have a lasting impact on the industry, especially in cloud computing and gaming,” a company invitation signed by chairman Jonney Shih (施崇棠) said on Monday.
At an investor conference last month, company CEO Jerry Shen (沈振來) confirmed that the Eee Pad was in the pipeline, but refused to commit to a commercial launch date for the device, saying only that it would use the Microsoft Corp platform.
“We will make sure our products create as much excitement as when we launched the Eee PCs,” he said.
Asustek created a new notebook segment by debuting the Eee PC — the industry’s first netbook computer — in 2007.
Despite the compromise on computing power, the device quickly became a hit globally, thanks to its portability and affordability, with a retail price of about US$500.
The iPad and Eee Pad rely heavily on cloud computing, an emerging technology that allows users to access data remotely stored in third-party storage rather than on internal hard disks, Shen said.
The Eee Pad will only hit stores when the “content and services” on the “cloud” have matured enough and are readily available, he said, adding that shipments of Eee Pads this year would not be “significant.”
Meanwhile, Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s top notebook maker, said yesterday it had no plans to launch netbooks running on Google Inc’s Chrome operating system at Computex.
“Despite recent rumors in the media regarding the launch of Chrome OS-based netbooks at Computex, Acer confirms that it has no short-term plans for such a product,” the company said in a statement.
Acer is interested in any product or service that enhances the overall experience of its products and will be following the progress of the Chrome platform and the evolution of Google’s overall product strategy, the statement said.
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