Posted on 01/07/2008 9:59:40 AM PST by ShadowAce
Who in the hell is Asustek, and why does Microsoft hate them more than any other company in the industry? Why does Apple, Dell and Palm Computing hate them?
And why does Intel love them?
Taiwan's Asustek -- better known as ASUS -- is one of the most interesting, innovative and fastest-growing companies in technology.
At its core, Asustek makes motherboards -- more than any other company. Asustek motherboards are the heart of Sony's PlayStation 2 consoles, Apple MacBooks, Alienware PCs, and some HP computers.
But that's not why they're hated. The source of ire is a tiny laptop called the ASUS Eee PC. This open, flexible, relatively powerful, and very small laptop is notable for one feature above all: Its price. The Eee PC can be had for as little as $299. (Go here to read the reviews -- they're all positive.)
Let's take a moment to ponder how cheap that is. This full-featured laptop costs $69 less than the 16 GB Apple iPod Touch. It's $100 less than an Amazon Kindle e-book reader. The most expensive configuration for the ASUS Eee PC on Amazon.com is $499.
Even though ASUS isn't a well-known consumer brand, and even though the company just started selling them in late 2007, the company expects to sell up to a half million units by March, and up to 5 million by 2009.
The reason Microsoft hates Asustek couldn't be more obvious. The Eee PC runs Linux (Xandros running KDE) and uses an appealing and innovative tabbed-based user interface developed by Asustek. The device also comes with OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office replacement, and Firefox. The entire system -- hardware, OS, office suite and applications -- costs $30 less than Amazon.com's discounted price for Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate alone. The Asus Eee PC is demonstrating to the world that its success depends on aggressively *avoiding* any Microsoft product.
Apple and Dell hate Asustek because these companies have been planning for quite a while to introduce flash storage-based mini laptops. But by the time they get around to shipping, the ASUS Eee PC will have already gobbled up some of the market. Worse, the ASUS Eee PC is preemptively poisoning the well by applying enormous price pressure on these two companies.
In truth, Apple isn't all that concerned because they'll do what they do, and the masses will respond. But poor Dell. That company's flash-based mini-laptop will probably cost five times as much as the ASUS. It will be 10% better and 500% more expensive than the ASUS Eee PC. Good luck with that, Dell!
Palm, Inc. hates Asustek because the company has made a fool out of them. Palm announced in May its Foleo mini-laptop. The device was slightly bigger than the ASUS Eee PC, but less capable and twice the price. The Foleo focused on connecting to the Internet through Palm's own line of giant cell phones. While many think Palm "killed" the Foleo, they in fact only killed the idea of shipping with a Linux-based OS.
In his blog announcement, Palm's CEO vowed to come back with a Foleo-like device that runs the same proprietary OS that powers Palm's next-generation of cell phones. By the time Palm gets around to shipping something, the market will be saturated with millions of ASUS Eee PCs on the low end, and thousands of Apple and Dell units on the high end.
Meanwhile, Intel loves Asustek. The ASUS Eee PC is powered by -- you guessed it! -- an Intel processor, namely the 900 MHz Intel Celeron-M. More than that, Intel respects Asustek for its engineering prowess. Intel discovered this fact when the company was struggling in the 1990s to fix a range of design flaws in its own 486 motherboard prototypes. Asustek was able to fix it, and in fact already had a fully operational motherboard for the chipset before Intel did. Since then, the companies have been very close.
Now rumors are circulating that a new Intel Merom-based ASUS Eee PC that may ship as early as April will run so efficiently that it won't need a fan. The entire laptop will be solid state -- no moving parts. Intel loves that kind of thing.
There's no question about it -- Asustek is the most hated company in the industry. Microsoft, Apple, Dell and Palm hate Asustek because the company can give us something they can't: A super cheap, flexible, powerful mobile computer. At $299, why would anyone not buy one?
see:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1948706/posts
The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry
Posted by twntaipan
On General/Chat 01/05/2008 8:51:16 AM EST · 105 replies
Santa brought me a new HD TV and now I’m looking for a new Playstation for the games as well as the Blu-Ray player.
My husband has been building all the pc’s for his small office for years, and uses almost exclusively ASUS motherboards, because they are reliable, easy to set up, and if one goes bad, they replace it. One that needed replacing wasn’t being made anymore, and they sent us a newer better motherboard, no charge because the other one had failed. They do business right. You can find almost any tech info you need on their website if things aren’t working right. We have always liked ASUS tons.
Re: The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry
For me, this is still MS.
Free market competition is a beautiful thing, from the customer’s perspective. :-)
Crud. Sorry. I wasn’t pinged to that thread, and my sesarch missed it.
Money line.
I only use ASUS motherboards. Only problem I have had with them is sometimes their manuals are pretty Engrish
It’d be a laugh with M$ OS, true, but not with Linux.
So do I.
True, it’s not powerful, but it’s designed for simple stuff—checking email while on the road, websurfing, banging out a few documents, storing a few files, things like that. I would love to have an inexpensive laptop like this with wireless Internet to get online while traveling. Plus the fact that it’s Linux-based is somewhat appealing in these days of massive Microsoft bloatware like Office and Vista.
}:-)4
Haven’t really heard about Linux since I was in college, when we installed Redhat on a number of computers in the business computer lab. I really liked the games that came with the software, as well as the office suite. Also liked the PERL editor.
That about sums it up. Apple won't play in that market, period. If they do introduce such a laptop, it'll probably be $1,500 with lots of flash storage, be relatively quite powerful, and capable of running anything. Dell will try to compete with the Eee PC in its market and fail, especially since they'll try to shoehorn Windows into it.
Besides, Apple's will have something extra to offer. A patent filing shows they might be planning to do gestures, with the entire area below the keyboard being sensitive to touch, yet ignoring when you rest your palms on it. They have already created most of that technology with the iPhone/iPod Touch.
On that, I agree completely.
I think they meant “Most hated by other companies” and not “Most hated by consumers.”
just pointing it out - lots of great comments.
I am *this close* to buying one of those eee pcs.
Maybe when the slightly larger screen/more memory capacity one comes out in a few months.
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