Acer and Asus to Halt Netbook Production [REPORT]

Acer and Asus, leading producers of Netbooks are slowly grinding their netbook production to a halt.

DigiTimes reported that Asustek will stop the production of Eee PC line of products and will slowly pull back from the market once the stocks are exhausted. Asus, as of now, has no new plans to open any new projects on Netbooks. This might mean that the manufacturer will be exiting from the market simultaneously.

DigiTimes has reported this piece of information based on sources close to the netbook players. The expected void to be left by the Netbooks, sized 10 inches, from Asus, is expected to be filled by the company's Transformer tablets. However, Eee PC's, priced at $300 (Rs. 16,400 approx.) will not be suitably substituted by Transformer Pad TF300T which sells at $513 (Rs. 28,100 approx.).

The report further attributed the reason for the discontinuation of the Netbooks to the introduction of Windows 8. The 1024 x 600 panel-sized Netbooks from the companies do not support Windows 8. Most Netbooks in the market have N and D-series Atom processors from Intel in them. The sales of these Netbooks are expected to significantly drop in the next quarter by over 50 percent.

Asus and Acer were responsible for the creation of the netbook era. However, when the current inventory of these devices is exhausted, it will mark the end of Netbooks in the market, closing the netbook chapter forever.

Other netbook producers are also slowly putting a stop to their netbook production. Dell has already halted production of Inspiron mini net books at the end of the previous year while Samsung plans to stop its netbook manufacture too.