New Delhi: Acer and Asus will cease production of netbooks soon, according to a report by Taiwanese industry tracker DigiTimes. Both of the remaining major netbook manufacturers will exit the category they helped create nearly five years ago, thus effectively killing off the entire device category.
While Asus had already dropped its EeePC brand in the middle of 2012 in order to focus on its Transformer series of tablets and hybrid devices, Acer has not announced any new models for quite some time. Both companies are expected to cease production, although existing inventory will continue to be sold as long as it lasts.
Other major OEMs have also stopped manufacturing netbooks. Dell was one of the first players in the netbook market to withdraw, when it stopped sales of its Inspiron mini line of netbooks late last year. Samsung had also hinted at ceasing netbook production in November 2011.
Netbooks emerged in early 2008, with Asus taking the lead with a small Celeron-powered device with a 7-inch screen and only 2 or 4GB of built-in storage. Later models used 9- and 10-inch screens, with built-in hard drives and much more comfortable keyboards.
Netbooks took off in a big way when Intel launched its low-cost, low-power Atom line of CPUs. The original Asus Eee PC models and similar devices from most manufacturers came with Linux-based OSes, but Windows XP and later Windows 7 Starter became the standard.
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