Asus becomes the largest non-Apple tablet shipper

Asus has shipped the second largest number of tablet after Apple during Q1 - as reported by Digitimes. The Taiwanese company successfully shipped about 400,000 tablet units during that time. Although Apple is far ahead with its hugely popular iPads, Asus did good to become the largest non-Apple tablet shipper even after starting much later than companies like Motorola and Samsung.

The main reason for these numbers is the success of its first Android-based tablet called the Eee Pad Transformer. At only $399, this toy makes a great value for money, and gives you more bang for your bucks by offering some unique additional goodies, including the external keyboard that can be attached to the tablet to use it like a netbook.

Although Asus has been struggling still to keep up with the huge demand, already talks of the second model started. It should be even more powerful with Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 and Google's next-generation operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich), set for launch in October – reports Digitimes. Aapart from the Transformer, a slightly different Eee Pad Slider is doing the rounds in markets right now, gathering gradual popularity on the way. This is a tablet with the keyboard already attached. You can slide it open or chose to close it to use all virtual keys. This arrangement eliminates the need of having to carry around the keyboard at all times.

The OEMs are not complaining either. Asus just crossed Acer to become NVIDIA’s biggest client – especially for its ARM-based Tegra series of processors.

Digitimes also says that Asus plans to ship two million Eee Pad tablet PCs in 2011.

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