Despite netbook segment that has gained much traction and appeared as a new driving factor to sustain PC hardware revenue during current economic crisis, the recently released third party report discloses that the none of the major netbook vendors is able to hit the first quarter sales target, as tally with what being observed by the shipment slowing down of Intel Atom processor that monopolizes most of the netbook designs in the market.

Most of the netbook sales are mainly powered by Intel Inc, using its tiny but yet powerful Atom processor and with collaboration effort from some of the major OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) that occupy the sales distribution include Taiwanese companies such as Acer, Asustek and MSI. Out of the total sales volume, Acer topped up with 40 percent followed by Asustek at 30 percent and other manufacturers sharing the rest of the pie chart distribution. For Acer that leads the market with its Aspire during first quarter, it was not able to meet its sales of two million units as forecasted earlier. Whereas for Asustek, its Eee PC volumes stay close to 900,000 units, slightly lower than one million units goal projected previously while MSI’s Wind series only managed to achieve 200,000 units.

This situation is understandable due to current economic downturn and both the chipmaker and PC manufacturers are expected to adjust their volume forecast accordingly and hopefully they will ramp up soon without cannibalizing conventional notebook market with lower revenue.