A Moment with Asus CEO Jonney Shih - Tablets, Smartbooks, and Wearable Computing - Mobile 2Silicon.com sat down with Asus CEO Jonney Shih to discuss current and emerging trends in mobile computing. While tablets seems to be the hot topic du jour in the mobile PC market these days, in talking with the CEO of the company that birthed the netbook PC, Jonney predicts that tablets are not ready for the market, citing that “Content is still not attractive enough today to the customer”.

Mr. Shih is also quite guarded on the prospects of Smartbooks stating that in order for these products to succeed, they need to be cheap, but that would also imply using OSes like Android or Chrome.

The CEO also talks about wearable computing and their WaveFace concept which we previewed during our PC Perspecitve CES2010 coverage.

All in all, it sounds like Jonney Shih is rather pragmatic preferring to wait for right market conditions, instead of blazing ahead (or jumping on the bandwagon depending on your opinion) like other tech companies. His cautious tone may be because he is keeping his cards close to his chest – time will tell!

Photo courtesy: Asus, via Silicon.com.
“Prototypes of tablet or slate PCs – touchscreen machines with no keyboards suited to watching media, reading e-books and web browsing – are sitting in Asus labs but Shih said the company is holding back on releasing any devices.

Asus’ caution stands in marked contrast to some other tech heavyweights, such as Microsoft and HP, who recently announced a tablet device at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and Apple – if rumours it is about to release an ‘iSlate’ machine are to be believed.

Shih thinks it would be premature to release a tablet today and predicts the devices will not be successful until there are easily accessible online stores of books, music, videos, games and other content tailored to the form factor.

“Content is still not attractive enough today to the customer,” he said.”

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