Sony leery of the Asus Eee PC?

From Crave -




At Sony's annual Open House event, Sony's IT product division senior vice president Mike Abary said if the Asus Eee PC starts to do well, it could potentially shift the entire notebook industry into a race to the bottom.

If mainstream PC buyers start to find their needs met by a lightweight, simply featured, inexpensive portable, it's likely to impel all of the major players in the industry to pile on by lowering their prices. And that's in an industry with already low margins for retailers and manufacturers.

So should Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and their ilk be frightened of Asus? So far, the version of the Eee PC in the U.S. only comes with Linux, but that will soon change. Japan got its Windows XP version last month, and the U.S. should be getting one in the next few weeks.

And even with just the open-source version available stateside, the numbers say it's striking a nerve: the company reported moving 350,000 units of the Eee in the first quarter it was available last fall.

Sony's not the only one taking notice. Acer is reportedly readying an Eee competitor, and the HP Compaq 2133 was developed with the Eee firmly in mind.

As for Sony, though it did start offering lower-priced notebooks last year in the $800 range, don't expect the company to go any lower just yet. Abary says so far the company is just "keeping an eye" on the Eee's activity.

Complete article here.