ASUS is acting bizarre - what the heck is going on there?

I used to prefer ASUS motherboards price permitting, and I'd generally only buy their graphics cards. They seemed to make more reliable hardware, with better documentation, and decent support (compared to the other Taiwanese manufacturers.) I was looking forward to buying an eeePC in the not distant future. But something bizarre is happening inside ASUS corporate, and I don't want to facilitate their bizarre behavior.

At Computex Taipei, chairman of Asustek, Jonney Shih apologizes Qualcomm chose to show an Asus derived product. ""I think you may have seen the devices on Qualcomm's booth but actually, I think this is a company decision so far we would not like to show this device. That's what I can tell you so far. I would like to apologize for that."

It was an eeePC running a Qualcomm ARM processor and Google's Android operating system. Reports were that it looked great, really polished and ready for production. Yet Jonathan Tsang, vice chairman of Asustek, said the Eee PC with Android is not ready yet because the technology is "not mature."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9133813

From what I have heard, the only thing "not mature" was the Asus customized version of Xandros Linux they tried putting on eeePCs. I've read reports people had to dump it because updates would kill the operating system. Some people put XP on it and were reasonably satisfied, but it slowed the machine down and ate a lot of disk space. Those who put the Linux distribution eeebuntu on it have been happy and said it really lets the machine shine.

Gordon Kerr Asus Austrailian Consumer Market Product Manager told a reporter Linux is likely to be phased out of the Asus eeePC product line, and “If you want the full functionality of a notebook you are going to go with Windows.”

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/304693/has_asus_all_given_up_linux

That's a pretty amazing claim, and about 180 degrees from the historical perception of Linux, and the realities of what netbooks are purchased for. Netbooks don't have all that much "functionality" to start with. They are meant to surf the web and open/edit Office documents during travel, both of which Linux on netbooks does quite well without the licensing fees and bloat of Windows. Linux is much more flexible than Windows, but you need to be more computer savvy to get that better functionality out of Linux. A lot of this has to do with the multiple types of better support companies provide Windows. Windows, while resourse intensive, and being occasionally known to eat itself, is more familiar to the basic computer user, given it is on 88% of consumer and personal business computers.

Is Microsoft putting the screws to Asus behind the curtains? Or is Asus not sophisticated enough to recognize good business and technical opportunities and plan well enough to capitalize on them? With all this going down, I'm not sure I want to support Asus in their strange and disappointing behavior towards Linux.