Park the hearse, cancel the appointment with the funeral director, and don't print the obituary, because netbooks are here to stay. Or at least that's the case if Asus has any say in the matter (and the company does).

Asus will continue to blitz the netbook market in 2011 by launching three to four brand new Eee PC models, which are in addition to upgraded versions of existing models already on the market, DigiTimes reports. By the end of the year, Asus plans to have shipped six million netbooks, claiming a 20 percent share of the market.

Eee PC business GM Samson Hu indicated that it's tough to predict what impact tablet PCs will have on netbooks sales, but that won't deter Asus from shipping as many netbooks as it can. Given the slow roll out of tablets in general, that's probably a safe bet.

Someone at Asus deserves a raise. We're talking about whoever it was that convinced the company it was a good idea to put so much time and energy into the netbook market, because that strategy has paid off in a big way. For the first time ever, Asus has positioned itself as one of the top 5 PC makers in the world, and it's mostly due to Eee PC sales.

According to market research firm IDC, Asus shipped 4.3 million PCs in the second quarter of 2010, claiming 5.3 percent of the market. That also represents an 84 percent growth rate for the quarter, putting the company shoulder-to-shoulder with Toshiba for the fifth spot.

"It's remarkable, particularly for people who haven't seen the Asus name around," said Loren Loverde, head of IDC's Quarterly Worldwide PC Tracker. "Toshiba is a long-time venerable PC player. Asus is a relative newcomer. But they have been shipping pretty significant volumes (of PCs), more substantially outside the U.S., but pretty significantly in most markets."

Hewlett-Packard still leads the pack with 18.1 percent of the market, trailed by Dell, Acer, and Lenovo, in that order.

This one's been a long while coming, but as of today, Asus is now shipping its Eee PC Seashell 1005PR netbook that was first shown off during CeBIT earlier this year.

Not much has changed since the last time Asus talked up its 1005PR. The 10.1-inch netbook still sports an Intel Atom N450 processor, 250GB hard drive, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, three USB ports, a 0.3MP webcam, and an embedded HD Decoder Broadcom BCM 70015 chip.

"Broadcom's latest Crystal HD technology puts HD multimedia in the hands of netbook users allowing them to access their favorite content anywhere at any time," said Dan Eiref, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom’s Consumer Electronics line of business. "The Broadcom Crystal HD solution brings a unique value to ASUS netbooks, providing a new level of performance and power consumption at a market leading price point."

Asus has priced its latest Seashell at $400.