Asus is expecting to ship a total of 11 to 13 million notebooks and netbooks in 2009, an increase of 25 percent over 2008, but more interestingly, it hopes to ship up to a million thin-and-lights by the end of the year.

Asus CEO Jerry Shen says demand is picking up in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, and that Asus expects demand for thin-and-light notebooks to increase in Q4. Shen expects Asus to ship up to a million recently launched thin-and-light notebooks by the end of the year. This basically means that by the end of the year one in four Asus notebooks will be based on Intel's CULV chips.

However, Asus hasn't been doing too well in the netbook market. Although it basically invented the market segment with its Eee PC netbook series, Acer soon caught up with it and eventually surpassed it in terms of netbook shipments.

Be as it may, the fact that Asus expects to ship a million UL and UX series ultraportables by the end of the year is rather encouraging. Asus has managed to outperform all notebook makers in the latest reliability studies, and its recently introduced netbooks and CULV-based notebooks look rather promising.