Sony, Toshiba and Fujitsu are all preparing to launch ultra low-cost laptops in an effort to get into the booming market led by Taiwan's Asustek, whose EeePC sells for as little as $300.
Quanta, the world's biggest notebook contract manufacturer, plans to make such a laptop for Sony, according to sources in Taiwan.
Inventec, a Taiwanese laptop manufacturer that also makes Hewlett-Packard's mini-note, is assembling a cheap laptop for Toshiba. And executives at Taiwanese component manufacturers say Fujitsu is preparing to make its own ultra low-cost laptop in-house.
The move is an attempt to counter the threat from makers of cheap laptops, which have been grabbing market share from the high-priced versions of the small format notebooks sold by the Japanese groups.
The unprecedented success of the EeePC, the low-cost notebook launched by Asustek late last year, has already prompted the three biggest laptop makers, HP, Dell and Acer, to announce their own plans for cheap notebook releases.
"For the Japanese, the rapid emergence of this new market segment is clearly a pain," said Alvin Kwock, an analyst at JPMorgan. "You see them making this move now because they fear the cheap laptops will cannibalise their UMPCs [ultra-mobile personal computers]."
Fujitsu confirmed it was developing a low-cost notebook for Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore. But the Japanese group said it had not decided when it would begin selling it.
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