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Asus set a target of 5 million units of its Eee PC netbook to be sold this year, which they appear to be reaching.  The only problem is that shipments of the Acer Aspire One are creeping towards its ambitious target of 6 million sales, 20% more than the Eee PC.

The title of “best selling netbook” is one that Asus will be incredibly reluctant to give up as it was mainly them who came up with the netbook idea, and it has been through them that the craze has spread.  However the numbers do not lie, Asus only shipped 1.7 million in the third quarter while Acer managed 2.4 million, and advantage they intend to continue into the fourth quarter with predicted sales to exceed this quarter.

What is it that makes the Aspire One more successful?  Is it the cheaper price?  The more colorful look?  Or the more established brand name?  What we do know is that the way in which the Aspire One has succeeded may well put them at the top of the market, and the advantage that they have going into the Christmas season may well be the crucial factor in deciding who is the king of the netbook.

If you don’t know what the Eee PC is, you must have been living in a cave for the last year.  However for those hermits out there here is a brief overview: the Eee PC (made by Asus) was the first commercially available netbook.  A netbook is a small, mobile and cheap laptop (the official description being “A mini laptop PC designed for mobility, typically sporting 7-inch to 10-inch screens and weighing less than 2 kilograms”).

The idea really hit off, and sales rocketed through Christmas and into the new year.  Many companies then started to catch on and started designing their own netbooks, with HP, Dell and Acer being just a few of the companies involved. 

Source [Info world]

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