Are you ready for the EeePhone? ASUS has announced its me-too intention to launch a "Googlephone" based on the Android operating system. Perhaps it noticed its smart phone rival HTC making some noise in the US with its G1 phone for T-Mobile.

This shouldn't surprise anyone as the overarching Taiwan business strategy is to copy, copy, copy whatever your neighbor is doing. That's not to say this is necessarily the worse move ASUS could be making. And one of the ideas of the Android thing is for everyone to start using the platform. But this IS different from, say, Motorola announcing it's jumping on the Android bandwagon. ASUS and HTC are virtual bunkmates in the tiny, incestuous Taiwan tech world.

Also, basically no one should really care what Moto is doing as it is on a downward spiral toward sheer irrelevance.

While ASUS is known for its notebooks/Netbooks, it is not exactly a major player in the Taiwan or the worldwide mobile phone markets. I don't have the global numbers, but for 2008 YTD, ASUS has shipped (not sold, mind you) only 30,000 smart phones (the company's main phone focus is on "smart" handsets) in Taiwan. Not encouraging for sure.

So you can't blame ASUS for wanting to jazz up its underperforming phone business, but we'll see if this works in the long run for the company's sales, business prospects and overall strategy. It's also been trying to make some noise about its upcoming changes (hopefully not just further brand dilutions) to the Eee PC Netbooks. One would think... again... that at this sensitive time for global business and ASUS' own emerging brand, the company would make greater effort to focus on core competencies and where it has made some traction (again, the Netbooks).

But as we've seen, ASUS doesn't really seem to be following a very logical path.

Anyway, I don't think HTC will pull an "oh no you didn't!" and decide to start making weak, cheap Netbooks to slap back at ASUS. It would be disappointing. But if I've learned anything from doing business in Taiwan, it's to never be surprised by local businesses' capacity to disappoint.

More to come.
--jag

 

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