ASUS' tablet shipments are due to surge enough that it may become one of the largest competitors in the field, touchscreen panel tipsters slipped out late Thursday. Once hit by chronic shortages, the company's shipments of Android tablets like the Eee Pad Transformer should reach 1.2 million to 1.5 million in the summer and only scale up further in the fall, according to Digitimes. Orders have supposedly jumped to include as many as four to 4.5 million tablets in the last six months of 2011.