Buy your 7in and 8.9in Eee PCs while you can - Asus is going to phase them out next year, company chief Jerry Shen has revealed.

Don't expect it to happen all of a sudden - Shen told DigiTimes it'll happen slowly. However long it takes, it's clear that Asus sees the 10in form-factor as the emerging standard for netbooks.

Shen said HDD-based netbooks amount to 70 per cent of the total number of such machines shipped. Windows XP is ahead of Linux by the same percentage he added.

So the 'standard' netbook next year will be a 10in model with a hard drive and running XP - MSI's Wind or the Asus Eee PC 1000H, in other words.

The good news is that prices will plunge. Shen said he expects the company to launch a $200 (£123/€156) Eee PC next year.

That should help drive worldwide netbook shipments to 20-25m units, which is Shen's forecast for the coming year. He reckons around a third of them will have Asus and/or Eee written on the front.

10in Netbook Reviews
Advent 4213
Eee PC 1000
Carphone Warehouse Webbook
Advent 4211
MSI Wind

Related stories

• MSI unwraps netbook with SSD and HDD (5 January 2009)
• MSI readies netbooks with HDDs and SSDs (1 December 2008)
• Asus intros £449 all-in-one desktop Eee (3 November 2008)
• Lenovo schools S10 netbook for colleges (29 October 2008)
• HP introduces stylish VIA Intel-based netbook (29 October 2008)
• Eee PC line to gain gamer-friendly graphics chip (29 October 2008)
• Eee PC maker readies Android phone for 2009 (29 October 2008)
• Asus' sexed-up Eee PC 1000-series netbook spied on web (28 October 2008)
• Eee PC series to get Windows 7 but not Vista, says CEO (22 October 2008)