Both Asus and Acer didn't get the memo that users want to pay less, not more, for netbook PCs. It's not that they're planning to jack up the prices willy nilly, but both companies are going to launch "luxurious" netbooks in time for the holiday shopping season.

More specifically, Asus is prepping its 12.1-inch Lamborghini netbook, the Eee PC VX6, which will sport an Intel dual-core Atom processor and Nvidia Ion 2 graphics.

Acer, meanwhile, is putting the final touches on its 11.6-inch Ferrari model, which will come outfitted with an AMD Fusion processor (Ontario) under the hood, as well as a Ferrari smartphone (Liquid E Ferrari).

The Eee PC VX6 will ship in September or October for $700, while Acer's Ferrari will debut sometime in the fourth quarter for an as-yet undetermined price.

The big question mark surrounding tablets is whether or not this emerging market will eat into netbook sales, or if the two segments can co-exist. If Asus' recent netbook performance is any indication, we may have our answer.

Asus only managed to sell 1.5 million netbooks in the second quarter, a drop of 100,000 units over the first quarter and short of the company's expectations. As a result, Asus president and CEO Jerry Shen recently told investors that Asus had to downward adjust its target shipments for the third quarter, which he blames on competition from Apple's iPad.

It's been somewhat of a rough year all around for Asus. Along with disappointing netbook sales, decreased shipments of motherboards and traditional notebooks have taken a toll on the company's financial performance, which declined during the second quarter.

What's interesting about this is that the tablet game is largely a one-man show, but will soon become crowded as 2010 comes to a close. Is this the beginning of a trend?

It's not uncommon for PC makers to dabble in both the low- and high-end markets, and every spot in between, but should Asus target the budget crowd, channel vendors believe the company could risk its reputation and damage its brand image, Digitimes reports.

So what's the big fuss? Those who feel this way point to the recent launch of an Asus-branded all-in-one PC selling for about $375 in Taiwan, the lowest price for such a machine so far. Up to this point, channel vendors say Asus has pushed its products as boutique items, not blue light specials.

Naturally, Asus doesn't see it the same way and said that the low-cost all-in-one is simply to fill market demand. But there's yet another explanation floating around, with some analysts saying Asus could be saddled with surplus components and is trying to make the best of a bad situation by moving lower cost products.

After a rough start to the summer, motherboard manufacturers are seeing sales pick up this this month and have turned optimistic about the third-quarter. Shipments are on pace to grow 20 percent on month in July, and if things continue this way, shipments will grow 15-20 percent sequentially for the quarter.

This is a far different picture than the gloom and doom scenario top-tier motherboard makers were painting just a short time ago. But as demand has started to pick up in Europe and China, so has their confidence that they'll be able to move more boards than previously thought.

So far this year, Asus has shipped roughly 10.3 million of its own-branded boards, followed by Gigabyte with 8.4 million units. ECS shipped the third most boards with 4.4 million units, followed by MSI and ASRock (a subsidiary of Asus) at 3.8 million and 3.9 million units, respectively.