Market sources told the DigiTimes that Asustek has already sent out documents outlining the merger plan to key personnel in both departments and that a schedule will be worked out in the near future.

ASUS president Jerry Shen has so far refused to comment on these claims.

Both major players in the netbook market, Acer and ASUS, have 11.6-inch netbooks (with 1366×786 resolution panels) on the way and the plan looks to be vendors differentiating between 10.1-inch and 11.6-inch netbooks in to draw clear divides in price and functionality. This would (quite obviously) mean that 10.1-inchers would be the cheaper alternative to the more upmarket 11.6-inchers.

ASUS recently revealed that it is on the verge of axing its entire 8.9-inch Eee PC netbook range and all this just solidfy the trend of companies leaning lean towards bigger netbooks these days.

Benson Lin, president of Asustek’s Asia-Pacific division, said that of Asustek’s 2009 Eee PC shipments, 90% of them will be 10-inch netbooks and 5% will be 7-inch models for telecom service operators.

Lin repeated what many are saying, that 10-inch netbooks are now becoming the norm, the mainstream standard, leaving the older, smaller machines out in the cold.

With all the talk of Windows vs. Linux, a war that Acer told us in December that Microsoft iss winning, its interesting to hear about the possibility of a new third party OS being used on a big name netbook.

Android was created originally for mobile phones but given the small screen resolutions of netbooks, it could be adapted quite easily. Whether the OS is a performer on netbooks is the big question and ASUS has put together a team of engineers to develop a netbook powered by Android to see if it could be worth using in future releases.

“Actually, the price is based on market competition so until now, for the netbook, the product shift from nine-inch to ten-inch models will help in Q1. So most of the product will be ten-inch based and so the price will be a little bit higher than the nine inch. But that’s based on the [move from nine to ten inches], not on the original price.

And for the notebooks, actually, there’s a lot of inventory from our competitors, so there’s no way to raise the price much.”

Summarizing all that, Shen said the price rises will happen but only because of the introduction of 10-inch screen netbooks which do cost more than their smaller counterparts.

Source: CrunchGear

Supposing this isn’t a flood of false information, the move will be a response to the ongoing global economic crisis and an increase in the cost of computer parts and manufacturing operations. ASUS will have a financial meeting on February 12th to discuss its Q4 2009 performance, and that may lead to some confirmation on whether we can expect a price hikes for ASUS netbooks soon.

Asus president Jerry Shen said a series of business reorganization plans are scheduled to be announced soon, which will include the merging of resources including digital family and desktop PCs. Essentially, Asus is feeling the effects of the global economic crisis and is trying to sort it out.

The company is currently overstocked on LCD monitors, motherboards, and graphics cards, but they expect that to be solved by the end of March. As for the Eee PC lineup, they plan to downsize it to four models, which means a bunch of Asus netbooks — possibly older ones that are being phased out anyway — will be axed from production lines shortly.

According to Asus, the netbook will run using Windows XP Home Edition with some multimedia software added to make the touchscreen functions easier. The T91 weighs in at 2 pounds and measures 1 inch in thickness, and Asus says it’ll be available in a variety of colours.

The other netbook release by Asus is the T101H, which shares many similarities to the T91 and is another of the new touchscreen netbooks. The main difference is a larger display, measuring 10-inches compared to the 8.9-inch T91. There is also a sleek new keyboard which, as Liliputer notes with excitement, has the shift key to the left of the up arrow and features flat keys and not the concave style you see on many Eee PCs.

The third model released isn’t exactly a netbook in the traditional sense, due to its 12.2-inch display, but the S121 features something that has everyone talking. A 512GB SSD. Yes, a 512GB SSD! Asus claims it is the world’s first, and true or not, that is one monster of an SSD.

With the bigger screen comes a bigger keyboard and if it turns out to be the same as the ASUS S101 performance-wise, it’ll come packed with 1GB of RAM, WiFi, BlueTooth, and a webcam. Pricing is likely to be high for this, but Jerry Shen, the CEO of Asus, recently said there is demand for these luxury models and this is why they are being developed.

Hat tip: Eee PC News