Asustek to launch Ion-based nettop in September and Eee Keyboard in October
Asustek Computer will launch Nvidia Ion-based Eee Box and Eee Top all-in-one PC, as well as two ultra-thin notebooks under its U/UX series line in September. The company will also launch its Eee Keyboard …
Context & Ripple Effects
Asus built the Eee Box as the desktop counterpart to its netbook franchise when it unveiled it in March 2008, and by October 2008 had stretched the Eee name onto motherboards while fielding virus complaints about the box itself. The line's momentum was real — the company reportedly shipped 700,000 Eee PCs in September 2008 alone.
The August 2009 move layers Nvidia's Ion platform under the Eee Box and adds an Eee Top all-in-one, two U/UX ultra-thin notebooks in September, and the long-gestating Eee-family outlier, the Eee Keyboard, in October. It matters because Ion gives Asus a way to differentiate commodity-priced small PCs on graphics rather than price alone.
First-order effects
- Nvidia lands Ion inside one of the highest-volume nettop channels — a maker that moved 700,000 Eee units in a single month — giving the chipset immediate retail distribution across Eee Box and Eee Top models.
- Buyers get HD-capable small-form-factor and all-in-one Eees from September, while the U/UX pair puts Asus directly into the ultra-thin notebook segment alongside its own netbook lineup.
Second-order effects
- Rival nettop and all-in-one vendors now face an Ion-equipped Eee line at netbook prices, pressuring them to add discrete graphics partners or compete purely on cost.
- Asus's simultaneous push into ultra-thin notebooks risks cannibalizing its own netbook volumes — the same buyer deciding between a $300-class netbook and a thin U/UX machine.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Eee ceases to mean 'netbook' and becomes an umbrella brand spanning nettops, all-in-ones, input devices and notebooks — with component-platform deals (Ion here, whatever comes next) doing the differentiation work that pricing once did.
- Nettops shift from being defined by minimal specs toward being judged on multimedia capability, which favors GPU vendors over CPU-only reference designs in the small-PC category.
The trend: Netbook-era brands are stretching across every small form factor, with GPU platform partnerships like Nvidia's Ion replacing price cuts as the differentiation lever.