Is the Eee PC brand the fastest growing in the world right now? When it first appeared at Computex in June 2007 it was intriguing, a new, outlandish idea that we genuinely didn’t think would catch on. Low-power internet-only machines for £100? Pah! It’ll never work!

When I had my first hands-on at IDF that September I was impressed, saying “the Eee PC could be a huge success in schools, particularly in emerging markets abroad.” If they’re totally honest, I reckon that’s what Asus thought at the time, too – I find it hard to believe anyone really predicted how big the lightweight laptop would become. 

Alright, Asus didn’t quite manage to hit that stunning price, but the Eee still struck an unexpected chord with consumers, growing in that short time from a newsworthy novelty, into an early-adopter fad, and onto a social phenomenon. Just count how many you see on the train each morning.

Back at the end of 2007, we thought the original Eee PC 701 was fantastic, marvelling at its usability despite the tiny 7in screen. It was a portable revelation, our conclusion marvelling, “what’s more, the battery lasts for well over three hours.”

Little did we expect the dimensions -and the juice – to grow as much as they have. Early 2008 saw the Eee PC 900 address the major issues by stretching the screen to 9in while raising the price. But it was summer ‘08 that saw the deluge. Acer’s Aspire One lowered the price bar for 9in netbooks, while the MSI Wind U100 threatened to steal Asus’s place at the head of the table by upping the screen to 10in, with an Atom processor and a more stylish body.

Rebadging let everyone in on the action, with the Advent 4211 doing the Wind for £50 less, and even printer giant Epson recently slapping its name on someone else netbook hardware in hope of gobbling some of the pie.

Asus wasn’t to be stopped that easily, though. The Eee PC 901 added the Atom to the already popular 900, and then Asus played its Ace: the Eee PC 1000H. A 10in screen, superb build quality and a real feeling of useability put it straight onto our A List, and had several PC Pro staff finally considering getting their wallets out (which, as a Friday night in the pub demonstrates, is rare indeed).

It’s since been threatened by MSI’s updated Wind U100-291UK with 6-cell battery, and then eventually dethroned by the near-perfect Samsung NC10, but no other manufacturer can boast anything like Asus’s netbook range. Asus has even managed to double its market share on the back of the Eee, from 3.7% to 7.4% in Q3 2008, sharing a whopping 80% of the netbook market with the other early adopter, Acer.

But while everyone else is trying to come up with a £300 beauty to compete with the established players – we’re very keen to see Sony’s first attempt if it ever arrives – Asus is moving on. Since all this netbook fuss reached ridiculous levels, we’ve seen the Eee PC S101, an attempt to take netbooks upmarket with Swarovski crystals, a ’mocha’ brown lid and an audacious price hike. We weren’t fooled.

Then the Eee PC brand got silly. The Eee Box B202 (above) put an Eee PC into a flimsy plastic box and took away the screen – and the whole point of an Eee PC. Robbed of the portability that was half the point of the original Eee brand, we wouldn’t go near it with your money, let alone our own.

And this month saw the latest Eee PC money spinner, the Eee Top ET1602 (below). Again, the Eee PC is shoved inside a PC, but this time with a screen – and a pretty impressive touch-sensitive one at that. For surfing recipes on the sideboard, or browsing your media collection while dancing round a bedroom, it’s an idea with some merit, executed with at least some success.

But I can’t be the only one getting a bit sick of seeing those three letters everywhere I look right now. I can’t wait for Sony to enter the market, and Lenovo and Philips and every other brand salivating over Asus’s profits with green eyes and a red face that they all thought it would never be a profitable area of the market.

It’s unlikely any of them will attempt to price-crash the party, but what’s certain is that the phenomenon of the netbook is only the start for a brand that Asus sees as capable of selling far more than just laptops. When the first Eee TV arrives in Curry’s at half the price of a Sony Bravia, we’ll know Asus has its eyes on world domination – and it’ll probably achieve it.