ASUS Drops WiMAX from Eee PC 901

Although ASUS promised in January that the company is planning to integrate WiMAX technology into its next generation Eee PCs, DigiTimes today reported that this is not going to happen and instead of WiMAX the recently revealed Eee PC 901 will get Bluetooth as standard option.

After two quarters of evaluation, Asustek believes the WiMAX market will not reach maturity in 2008, and has therefore decided to push WiMAX only in its 14.1- to 15.4-inch notebooks, mainly in the US market, noted the sources. Asustek will keep to its original plans to launch WiMAX-based VX2, U6 and V1 notebooks before the end of this year, however, the cancellation of the WiMAX Eee PC is likely to impact the company's original goal of having WiMAX featured in 15% of notebook shipments in 2008.