Uh-oh, PC makers are doubting Apple again

Apple’s announcement of the $599 MacBook Neo last week was a bombshell for the company’s fans and customers. But the announcement had reverberations far beyond the Apple ecosystem.

In an earnings call on Tuesday, Asus co-CEO S.Y. Hsu explained that such a radical change of direction for the Cupertino company is a big deal for manufacturers of lower-priced Windows PCs: “In the past, Apple’s pricing situation has always been high,” he said (translated from Chinese, and via PC Mag). “So for [the company] to release a very budget-friendly product, this is obviously a shock to the entire industry.”

However, Hsu doesn’t seem to think the Neo will have much of an impact on the budget PC laptop market. He cited the Neo’s non-upgradable 8GB of memory as a factor that could limit its appeal, and described it disparagingly as an iPad-esque content consumption device. “This is different from the use case of a mainstream notebook,” he said, almost convincingly.

Still, Hsu admitted that the Windows PC industry had been carefully following those rumors and trying to decide how to respond if and when such a product was launched. While the Neo’s specific details, and particularly its price tag, were a closely guarded secret until the last moment, its existence had been rumored since the middle of last year.

“In the entire PC ecosystem,” he said, “there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product.” However, those discussions have not been entirely pessimistic, based on Hsu’s bullish verdict on the new MacBook and its prospects of competing with Windows notebooks.

The problem for Windows PC manufacturers is that most reviewers don’t really agree. In our MacBook Neo review, for example, we found the device to be “an excellent choice as a general productivity computer” and praised its single-core CPU performance. “You can technically do anything,” writes my colleague Roman Loyola. “Content production, software development, database management, and more.” He concedes that pro-level tasks will push the Neo beyond its limits, but the same would likely be true of a $599 netbook.

So unless Asus can boost performance while keeping prices down—not easy when there’s a memory shortage—its CEO may have a few more worries ahead. Have PC makers already forgotten Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s reaction to the iPhone?