The EeePC established a new product category of small form factor PCs called the “Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC)“. We already have seen some UMPC concepts before, but they were just concepts, never reaching a critical mass. With the EeePC the story is different. The price point was right from day one to hit a sweet spot in the market.
A ultra portable computer that fulfills all the basic requirements (e.g. emailing, instant messaging, voip, browsing, flash support, rich-media play capabilities) with a price tag of 300 € – a new star was born. The EeePc was sold out in the first couple of weeks/months. Asus was not able to satisfy the demand. At the end of 2007 they have sold >300k EeePc’s and are planing to sell millions in 2008.
As always in business. If you are successful, you attract attention and players start to enter the market in order to compete for market share. The newest player in the UMPC arena is Dell. Dell the 800-pound gorilla in the PC industry revealed that it prepares a competitor for the EeePC. There is no price mentioned yet, but i would assume that Dell will have a competitive offer.
