Chicago (IL) – Acer, one of the most successful netbook builders so far, has begun shipping 10.1” netbooks as an upgrade of its 8.9” Aspire One.


According to DigiTimes, the 10.1” versions are currently shipping in Hong Kong and Taiwan only, while a global volume rollout is planned for later this month. The publication stated that Acer may purchase up to nine million 10.1” LCD panels this year and that it expects to sell between 12 and 15 million netbooks in 2009.

That number is up at least 100% from the firm’s 2008 shipments of about six million Aspire One units. Asus, which is still perceived to have been the creator of the netbook (while it was actually OLPC that had the first device of this kind), said that it has sold about five million Eee PCs last year. Amazon recently listed the Aspire One with the 160 GB hard drive as one of the best-selling items during the past Christmas season.

The change to 10.1” screens is an ongoing trend, but more netbook vendors will try to differentiate themselves from rivals with unique features. Asus and HP, for example, will introduce touch-screen netbooks and we are seeing more and more evidence that the netbook in fact may also revive the concept of the tablet PC – with touch-screens that can be folded on top of the keyboard.

There are still limitations on how far netbooks can go, however, imposed by companies like Microsoft which will not allow its OS to be installed once certain levels of memory, storage capacity or screen size are observed.

Also, there will be substantial hardware upgrades as we hear that Intel will soon be launching a new Atom processor (N280) with Diamondville core.