Out of the Box

In a piece that casts doubt on the future of the (sigh) “netbook” market, Matt Richtel curiously provides quotes from Sony Electronics and Fujitsu, two of the more successful companies selling high-end ultraportables in the U.S., but doesn’t include any quotes from companies that have actually launched these products here, including HP and Asus.

It’s not surprising that Sony and Fujitsu would be relatively down on inexpensive ultraportables because their products are the most immediately threatened by inexpensive notebook PCs with small screens. Really, though, they needn’t worry, because anyone willing to invest $1,500 or more for a high-end ultraportable isn’t going to downgrade to this product.

In other words, at least in the UI.S., netbooks are about market expansion at a time when consumers are going more mobile. HP at least is thinking about these products in the right way, targeting students and other select demographics who need light computing on the go. Is that 10 percent of the notebook market for the next two years? Probably not. But as Tim Bajarin aptly notes in the Times piece, when you are at the scale of an HP or Dell, you’re not going to surrender shelf space or mindshare to an unknown Asian upstart.

It’s all well and good to pursue margin, but there’s no margin in a market that doesn’t yet exist. While we will see barebones Linux configurations for  $300 or $400, more of the market is going to be closer to $500 or $600 where major manufacturers move plenty of Windows notebooks, many of which have at least some higher component costs.

This fall, we’re going to see a lot of activity in this market.. it’s going to get pretty bloody fast. And to be clear, the space between the smartphone and notebook PC has been a difficult one to fill. But it’s very difficult to ascertain the true potential of this device because their real opportunity is in a world of integrated, affordable broadband wireless access, an evolution of the explosive growth notebooks saw after Wi-Fi became popular.

Share This

OMG, GMTA! Engadget and Gizmodo have both posted mini-treatises (the latter less mini) on terminology for small, inexpensive notebooks, answering the call of a comment on one of my posts a while back.

Analysts love to put things in boxes (and I deal with my share), but I think it’s probably too early to start getting into semantic taxonomies. That may be prejudiced by working at a firm that substantially tracks technology products after they ship and often after they reach a high enough volumes to penetrate retail. Nevertheless, the terms being bandied about for these products are tainted by older contexts that the Gizmodo article doesn’t fully explain, even though they do reference the Libretto, one of the earlier subnotebooks.

Speaking of which, I view ultraportables as a synonym for subnotebooks. The former term began being used by notebook manufacturers who didn’t like the idea of their lightest smallest wonders being referred to as “below” notebooks.

Anyway, here’s how I break down these products using a lot of the vernacular currently being thrown around:

Update: Intel (or parties therein) is now referring to the mini-note category as a “netbook” which people might remember was a name given to the Psion Series 7-type device years ago. I’m not wild about this term because I think it implies too much of a thin client approach, particularly as these PCs are increasingly shipping with Windows. It may be catchier, though, than “mini-note” (which I think has more momentum now, and which somehow has a more European flavor (Minitel?). In any case, I’ve added it as a name to the device class.

Share This