Asus is Working on a Smartphone for the U.S. Market, May Launch in 2014

The smartphone market is a crowded field, but be that as it may, Asus may make a serious run with a handset it intends to launch in the U.S. perhaps as early as next year. Asus chairman Jonney Shih revealed that his company is already hard at work on the handset, though he knows he faces an uphill battle against established players like Apple and Samsung.

"For the phone, frankly speaking, we are still the latecomers," Shih told All Things D during an interview.

Asus PadFone

Shih pretty much ruled out a 2013 release, saying that "next year is more reasonable." If that's the case, we can hardly wait to see what the company comes up with. Asus has already dipped its toes into the phone market with its PadFone and FonePad, a pair of devices that never launched in the U.S. market and didn't see much success internationally, either.

Unfortunately, Shih didn't drop any hints about the handset it's working on, including details of how big it might be and which platform it will run on (our guess is Android).