Samsung to overtake Asus in netbook shipments by 2010

Asus is currently the world’s second largest netbook supplier, behind only Acer. Well, considering they invented the market segment, this doesn’t come in as much of a surprise, really. But the thing is, Samsung Electronics may actually start to surpass Asus as the world’s largest supplier of netbooks.

Asus is planning to ship only six million units of its venerable Eee PC, putting it well behind Samsung. According to Digitimes:

Despite that some of Samsung’s component partners expect the company to ship only seven million notebooks in total in 2010, others believe the company will be able to ship more than 10 million units, of which 7-8 million units will be netbooks.

Since Acer is forecast to maintain shipments of 12 million netbooks in 2010, Acer will still be the leading netbook brand; however, the fast growth of Samsung in the netbook segment is causing a significant threat toward Acer, the sources pointed out.

The thing is, Asus is trying to shift to more traditional notebooks back as the main focus of their computer department. Or they’re going to work on vacuum cleaners.