Intel recently revealed plans to introduce their Intel Classmate netbook with those very features at CES, while Asus is preparing the release of its first Eee PC netbooks featuring touchscreen and twistable screen uses, and are likely to show them off before the actual event (which begins on January 9th) at the pre-show exhibit on January 6th.

Gigabyte seem to have been ahead of the pack though, as the pricey Gigabyte M912 with a touchscreen has been on the market for some time, and it’ll be interesting to see how the upcoming releases from bigger name brands build on Gigabyte’s example, if at all.

The companies signed a cooperation agreement in April of this year that was to have seen VIA’s C7 and Nano CPUs paired with MCP79 IGP chipsets from Nvidia, but for still unknown reasons these plans have come to a grinding halt. Electronista brought up Apple’s rumoured plan to be working on a tablet- or netbook-like device that could require full cooperation from NVIDIA and could be a plausible explanation for the breakdown in these plans.

VIA said that they and NVIDIA do still plan to cooperate and showcase desktop PC products at CES 2009, despite cooperation on their netbook platform being suspended.