Apple's iPad may be all-purpose, but with its large screen and a dedicated e-book store behind it, it's poised to become one of the Kindle's biggest rivals. Meanwhile, Google already has its own e-book store, and although it doesn't have any hardware to sell to potential buyers yet, it is reportedly working on a Chrome OS tablet with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC.

With three of them (Amazon, Apple and Google) sharing the market, a prediction that each of them will have about 35% market share in the next five years isn't that hard to believe. But in my opinion, five years is quite a long time (especially in the tech sector) and other companies like Asus, LG or Acer who are also reportedly working on their own e-book readers might advance and easily supplant any of the aforementioned three.

Via WSJ

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Analyst predicts Amazon’s downfall in e-book market due to competition

When netbooks were first introduced to market, a lot of people didn't know where these devices were headed. After all, it was a time when many were rocking OS X and Windows Vista with Intel Core 2 Duo processors, then netbooks came along with a lightweight flavor of Linux and low-power Celeron chips. Slowly but surely Linux gained market share thanks to the popularity of netbooks that followed, but soon people realized they needed Windows on these machines, and Linux was forgotten again little by litte. Now, Robin Harris from ZDNet says that Windows currently claims an 80% attach rate for netbooks. It appears people just still can't live without help from Microsoft on their computers.

Does this mean that Linux will now just fade away like a fad, and its usage remain only with the hardcore computer users that want more freedom than compatibility in their computing setups? Something tells me yes. And with the advent of Windows 7 for netbooks, especially if Microsoft gets the pricing right upon final release, we just might never see Linux on netbooks ever again. When that happens, I can't say I will be surprised. I'll probably just wonder why it hasn't happened sooner.

Via Storage Bits

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Windows dominance in netbook market spells doom for Linux and its prospects

If the worldwide growth in the PC market was not due to the resurging sales and popularity of netbooks, then what else could have propel such growth? According to reports, PC shipments during the last quarter grew by 15% as compared to the sales in the same quarter last year.

PC Manufacturer HP was able to ship around 14.7m units which is equivalent to 18.4%  market share. Following HP was Dell with 10.9 million units sold equivalent to 13.6% market share. Lastly we have Acer in third place with 10.3 million units sold for a market share of 12.5%.

But despite topping the worldwide sales chart, HP however lost its position in the European PC market. Well, anyone can attribute this to the lackluster performance of HP's entry into the netbook market - the HP Mini Note 2133. In the US PC market, Dell is dominating the chart with 29.5% market share, HP at second with 25.7 market share and Apple landed on number 3 with 9.5% market share. Sales of netbooks accounted for around .

One doesn't have to think too deeply to know that Acer's position was somehow propelled by its netbook the ACER Aspire One which is growing more popular among netbook users.

If HP pushed their netbook a little farther, they might have taken a bigger percentage of the PC market.

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Worldwide PC Sales Grew, Thanks to Netbooks