The netbook market is turning into a battleground as numerous competitors, platforms, and product types fight it out. A new business model integrating Internet-aware terminals and services is needed.
Netbooks have been defined as small, inexpensive notebook personal computers (PC) mounting Atom processors from Intel Corp of the US. This product genre is evolving, though, and I expect that the term will come to include any mobile, Internet-aware terminal," predicts a product manager at a major Taiwanese PC manufacturer.
The netbook market finally entered the second phase at the end of 2009, as the market positioned between smartphones and notebook PCs becomes a battleground for not only PC manufacturers, but also manufacturers of mobile phones and those in related industries. The comment above forecasts a succession of new Net-aware terminals appearing on the market.
Conditions of SaleSince ASUSTeK Computer Inc of Taiwan released the first netbook, the Eee PC 701, in Oct 2007, the netbook market has grown with phenomenal speed. A survey by The Goldman Sachs Group Inc of the US states that while only 200,000 netbooks were shipped worldwide in 2007, volume surged to 11.4 million only a year later (Fig 1). Shipments are expected to continue to climb, hitting 22 million in 2009 and 29.5 million in 2010. This last figure, 29.5 million units, represents 17% of the notebook PC market.
The reason that netbooks have been so successful is, as Kanae Maita, principal analyst, Client Computing Markets, Technology & Service Provider Research of Gartner Japan Ltd explains, "More than anything else, the low price." Small, light notebook PCs always had considerable hidden demand, but before the appearance of the netbook such a machine could cost Yen200,000 or more, preventing many consumers from picking one up. While netbooks do not boast the best possible performance, adds Gartner Japan's Maita, "They offer three basic values, namely, significantly lower price, simplicity and ease of operation, and good portability." And as a result, they have been able to capture the hidden demand.
After the NetbookComputex Taipei 2009, one of the largest PC-related shows in the world, was held in Taiwan in early June 2009, and was packed with firms planning to enter the netbook business in the hope of sharing in its booming success. Freescale Semiconductor Inc and Qualcomm Inc, both of the US, announced the "Smartbook" product concept closely resembling netbooks (Fig 2). MIPS Technologies Inc of the US disclosed that it has optimized its MIPS architecture for the Android software platform developed by Google Inc of the US. One of the target markets is mobile Internet devices (MID).
In July 2009 Google announced the "Chrome OS" operating system (OS), based on the Chrome Web browser. The source code will be disclosed before the end of 2009, and the first netbooks and similar terminals running it are expected in the second half of 2010.
While the netbook market is currently dominated by Intel's Atom processor and Windows XP from Microsoft Corp of the US, a flood of new terminals is on the way featuring ARM, MIPS and other processors, and Linux operating systems like Android, Chrome OS and Moblin 2.0.
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