The netbook market is expected to maintain shipments of about 30 million units in 2011 with the top-three vendors to ship about six million units each, according to the word on the street here in Taipei. Netbooks are Dead is a catch phrase that’s been going around since the release of Apple’s iPad. However, it appears that the manufacturers have recently changed their position after looking at the market and believe that netbooks still have a place. The reasons for this change of heart is they realized they are likely to have difficulty earning good profits since smartphone vendors are also aggressively cutting into the market. So it seems that many are changing their plan to have more balanced approach rather then dropping netbooks for tablets. They have good reason for keep netbooks around, Intel is in fact earning a strong profit and AMD has recently entered the netbook market with its latest APU which will make the segment more attractive due to competition. Its exciting times for mobile, especially when Intel is upgrading Atom to the N570 at the end of February. ASUS Eee PC business general manager Samson Hu pointed out that the impact from tablets on netbooks is still difficult to estimate, so the company will continue to develop its Eee PC product line and is aiming to ship at least six million netbooks in 2011, accounting for 20 of the global market. The company expects global netbook shipments in 2011 will maintain at 30-35 million units as in 2010. An important thing to note is that while the US might be “over it” when it comes to netbooks globally (and this is where is matters the most) current netbook sales are strong in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Brazil and the Middle-East. So even if US sales numbers are down globally numbers remain un phased. What we are seeing from these emerging market is that although tablets have fallen into favour netbooks still have the advantage if you weigh in function over price. In markets where a secondary device that costs more ...