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The low-budget ultraportable has been hailed as a runaway success for the Taiwanese manufacturer, and has spawned an entire new segment of the laptop market - the so-called 'netbook'.

However, Asus has revealed that it shipped 1.7 million of the devices in the first six months of the year - 300,000 fewer than it had forecast, according to a report in the <

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Digitimes.

Shortages of Intel's Atom processors and various other component supply problems have been blamed for Asus's missed target.

Nevertheless, the company remains confident that it will sell five million of the mini-laptops by the end of the year.

Rival Acer, meanwhile, claims it has sold out of its netbook device, the Aspire One. Acer says it will ship 15,000 of the devices every day following the launch of a Windows XP version in July, and claims it has secured a fixed allocation of Atom processors from Intel, according to the Digitimes report.

Acer president Scott Lin claims that netbooks will eventually comprise 10-15% of overall laptop sales, echoing earlier reports of a PC shipment boom because of the devices.