ASUS has confirmed plans to release its first Chromebooks in early 2014.
In a conference call to investors, Asustek CEO Jerry Shen announced that two new Chromebook products will ship worldwide towards the end of Q1 (spanning January through March) next year.
Rumours and industry reports have long hinted that the Taiwanese PC maker would expand into more computing areas, such as Chromebooks and smartphones, as a way to offset a sharp decline in its traditional Windows-based PC business.
According to The Taipei Times, the company’s first set of Chromebooks will consist of a 11.6″ model priced at US$199 and a larger 13.3″ version set to retail for US$249.
Could these new ASUS notebooks account for the mysterious Tegra 4 and Baytrail-powered devices recently unearthed in Chromium code commits?
Time, as always, will tell. For now, no further details, specs or info on the devices have been made available.
ASUS Chromebox
While we’re on the subject of ASUS, you may remember than an ASUS-branded Chromebox was one of several (then new) Chrome OS-powered devices to be shown off at the Intel Developer Forum 2013 back in September.
Unfortunately for anyone out there hotly anticipating its release, these latest rumblings fail to shed any new light on when or what to expect.