Can Netbooks Kill the Regular Laptop Industry?

August 11, 2008 10 Comments

Fact: Ever since Asustek released its first netbook in 2007, it has liven up the sleeping netbook market and suddenly, in a span of more than a year, netbooks have become the most popular hardware commodity. Likewise as soon as Asustek’s Eee PC awaken the sleeping netbook market, other PC manufacturers released their own netbooks one after the other. And so we’re starting to feel the saturation of the netbook market as more and more models are released almost every month.

The success of netbooks was enhanced by the release of Intel’s ATOM processor, which have tremendously increased the processing speed and battery life of netbooks, which was the only letdown in using these little machines. With the growing popularity of the netbooks, the PC industry was suddenly caught unguarded. Nobody predicted this success of netbooks. Suddenly, the PC industry are afraid that netbooks might eclipsed the popularity (if it hasn’t done so) of traditional laptops and gradually their sales as well.

But one industry major player, AMD is neither afraid nor interested to join the netbook fray. It continues to adapt a wait-and-see attitude and continues to monitor and study the behavior of the netbook market. For AMD, it is not yet clear whether or not this growing shipment of netbooks will cannibalize the sales of traditional laptops. For AMD, releasing a processor designed for netbooks is not yet in their immediate plans.

AMD’s vice president of advanced marketing told PC World that:

“We haven’t announced anything for this type of cheap mini-notebook and we’re still taking this wait-and-see attitude.”

Although, there has been no market study yet that will point out the adverse effect of netbook sales on the sales of mainstream laptops, one thing is starting to become clear though, prices of mainstream laptops are falling down to as low as $299. Obviosuly to compete with the low-cost prices of netbooks.

The declining prices of mainstream laptops maybe a good development for users, but for manufacturers’ this might severely affect the viability of their companies, unless of course if they would do something to lower the manufacturing cost of their laptops which could only mean that they will have to decrease the power and features of their products. When that happens, ultimately the consumers are still the one who are going to suffer.

The question still remains to be answered though. Are netbooks bound to kill the mainstream laptop market? What do you think?

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ASUS, EEEPC
  • Mikey

    Darn those evil consumers buying what they want instead of what is offered.

  • James

    I see the netbook form factor (especially the 10 inch screen point) expanding to also include high-end branding, features and prices. For example, a ThinkPad netbook (traditional ThinkPad design with TrackPoint, etc) for double the price of an Eee PC could rock the corporate market…

  • http://jrocas.com.ph jhay

    Unless they could pack the features and capabilities of a regular laptop into a UMPC, then the regular laptops are dead.

    Then again this may be still a few more years away.

  • http://smallcomputing.net scn

    I’m doubting this is going to have any long-standing effect on the laptop industry considering how limited netbooks really are compared to a “real” laptop. Consider this: streaming video is a major part of what people do on the internet and the current crop of netbooks are hamstrung before they ever get to the website. Unless people are satisfied with low quality video being played in the default (read: small, even on a small screen) window, there’s going to be a desire to have more power while still maintaining most of the portability.

    Some of us enthusiasts may not mind that the machines are still relatively low powered (again, in comparison to a normal laptop), but I’m not so sure the average consumer is ready to accept the limitations that come with the devices. Never mind that most of them to date, in the US at least, have poor battery life, and that’s another major negative against them, especially for business users.

    I imagine as time rolls on these issues will be addressed, but in the meantime, if it means that Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. have to cull their lines a little bit and stop making 48 variations of the same thing, is that really so bad? And if it also gets said remaining 15 variants into our hands for less money, it’s hard to consider that a loss.

  • http://www.mswebby.com Mike

    Netbooks are just type of laptop. To me it’s just another column on the dell laptop page: netbook, ultra portable, portable, mid range, desktop replacement.

    In a few years, all laptops may be as thin as the Apple Air, but gamers, graphic designers and the elderly will still rely on big screens.

    This just seems like a preview of one aspect of the mainstream notebook market. It’s a “look what we can do” kind of thing. Eventually, these netbooks will be phased out by more powerful netbooks, and normal sized laptops will combine larger screens and powerful video cards with the efficient processor design and solid state hard drives of tomorrow’s netbooks.

  • Sandy

    If I was a laptop designer, I’d be focusing of building larger 17 or even 19 inch laptops. It seems like people are moving away from desktops, and its likely that people will want a semi-portable large laptop for moving around the house with (with a fantastic large screen) and a 7-10 inch netbook for ultimate portability.

  • box

    James :

    there’s already a thinkpad netbook for twice the price. x61.

    same width as the aspire one, better keyboard, 8 hour battery, etc.

    there are x41 tablets on ebay for the price of a regular eee

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  • http://www.netbook2010.com Noob Book

    OMG ! Cool Information. Somebody know why people love netbook more than notebook?

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