Taiwan-based Asus Technology, a manufacturer of motherboards and netbooks, launched Asus X101, a new netbook targeted at people who want a device for social networking and Web surfing.
The company, in association with Intel, launched the product as a new third category in mobile computing apart from notebooks and smartphones.
Mr Alex Huang, Country Head, Asus Technology (India), said, “Notebooks are more for professional use while smartphones are for casual surfing. This gadget is a cross between the two and the user can use it not just for surfing and viewing photos, but also for typing short notes and emails.”
The netbook, priced at Rs 12,499, runs on Intel's MeeGo OS and is powered by Intel's Atom processor N455 CPU. It weighs less than 1 kg and is 17.6 mm thin. It comes with an inbuilt Asus applications store, a preloaded cloud storage system called Dropbox, and battery optimisation software which the officials claim will increase battery efficiency by 53 per cent.
‘affordable'
The company, which believes that the X101 is affordable to about 90 million households in India at the current price, expects netbooks to contribute about 20 per cent of its total revenue from the second half of the year, according to Mr Huang.
The product will initially be sold through its channels and will then enter the retail space across the country. The company, however, is not looking at exports immediately, Mr Unaez Quraishi, Distribution Director- System Business Group, Asus India, said.
Bets on netbook
Asus believes that the popularity of tablets would not affect the netbook market, and though growth is slow, the demand is bound to grow.
“The market for netbooks in India is about 40 million units, which is 6 per cent of the PC market, and the netbook market is growing 40 per cent year on year,” said Mr Prashanth Adiraju, Director- New Platforms Business Group, Intel South Asia.
While on one hand companies are looking to integrate functions and introduce a single gadget to perform different functions, Asus is bringing in a third product between laptops and smartphones and adding an extra product for the user