HTC has delayed the volume shipments of the HTC Shift UMPC, that was planned for December. The new delivery date for this Windows Vista UMPC is now January of 2008 according to Digitimes.

The real question is whether or not a lot of people are still waiting for the HTC Shift. The 7 inch Windows Vista UMPC is a nice piece of hardware, but it's price is around $1,500. The Asus Eee PC 8G is selling for 1/3 of that. You really have to ask yourself what more the HTC Shift is doing for you for the additional $1,000 that the Asus Eee is not doing. Additionally more low-cost Linux UMPCs will swamp the market in 2008.

Back in March when HTC announced the HTC Shift, the Asus Eee was not around. I am close to betting that the HTC Shift will be dead on arrival.

The HTC Shift features a 7 inch touch screen and a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. Other features of the HTC Shift include a 40GB/60GB HDD, 1GB RAM, tri-band HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity, USB port, VGA port, and SD Card slot.
See also this hands-on first review of the HTC Shift that appeared in August.