Asus CEO Jerry Shen said his company is planning on shipping 300,000 units of its Eee Pad Transformer this month. Those shipment figures, Shen argues, will exceed shipments of all other tablets, besides the Apple iPad. Shen also noted that Asus shipped 400,000 units in April and May, according to the Taiwan Economic Times.
When the Asus Eee Pad Transformer arrived in the US three months ago, it was quickly sold out. Rumors suggested that the device was low in volumes due to component shortages or even because of quality control issues but Asus declared that finding a unit was hard due to demand, not supply. The company announced two months ago that it was increasing the number of units shipped.
The Eee Pad Transformer sets itself apart from the tablet competition with an optional chiclet-style keyboard dock that essentially transforms the device into a netbook. Besides making the device much more convenient to type on and handle productivity tasks, it also extends battery life from around 9.5 hours to 16 hours thanks to a second battery within. The actual device costs $400 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only model, although the dock will set you back an extra $150.
The Transformer has a 10.1-inch 1280×800 IPS Gorilla Glass capacitive touchscreen display, a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear and 1.2MP front cameras, a Micro SD expansion slot, and HDMI out. You'll also find speakers and audio jacks, USB 2.0, 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, as well as a G-sensor, light sensor, gyroscope, e-compass, and GPS. It also comes with Asus' Waveshare interface, which includes MyNet (streams media to networked devices), MyLibrary (digital bookstore) and MyCloud (cloud storage and remote access tool). The Transformer comes with Android 3.0 (codenamed Honeycomb) but is upgradeable to Android 3.1 (codenamed Honeycomb) via an over-the-air update.
