From what I saw at the mesh conference earlier this month, the netbook – a small, lightweight, no-frills laptop – has huge potential among people who want something that sits between a regular laptop and a smartphone.
To date, the netbook has yet to capture the imagination of consumers even though Acer, for example, has made some inroads with some interesting and low-cost products.
The 600-pound gorilla sitting in the corner is Apple. If Apple moves into the netbook market, the netbook suddenly gains huge validation and traction.
Yesterday, Apple COO Tim Cook did a great job dismissing speculation Apple is working on a netbook. (Hat tip to VentureBeat for the quote)
“For us, it’s about doing great products,” Cook said yesterday. “When I look at netbooks, I see cracked keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens. It’s just not a good consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on. It’s a segment we would not choose to play in.”
Translation: If Apple is going to enter the netbook market, it’s going to be a product that is well-designed, user-friendly and reasonably price (as opposed to cheap). The last thing Apple wants to do is burst onto the scene with something that fails to resonate with consumers.
In some respects, the netbook market is sort of like the portable device market that Apple tried to carve out with the Newton. Despite the Newton’s innovation, Apple got into the market far too early, which went a long way explaining why it bombed.
My sense is Apple is happy to wait on the sidelines while others battle to create the netbook market. When the time is right, do not be surprised to see Apple burst onto the scene with a cool netbook that sells about $500 to $750. When that happens, there will be so much pent up demand, Apple will steal market.
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I think if you read between the lines hopefully it means that there will still be a large format Touch – no keyboard, no terrible software, no junky hardware, smallish screen but much better than current Touch.
Do you remember (and I'm sure you do) way back when Oracle had grandiose dreams of creating the "NetPC"? Kind of a return to the Client/Server model but 'web-enabled'.
The recent gobbling of Sun by Oracle makes me wonder if Larry may revive that dream. This time in the guise of a 'netbook'.
Stranger things have happened.
I think you're bang-on Mark, and I agree with Tim in that there'll likely be a bigger version of the Touch. That's something I'd definitely be interested in – not so much for me, but for my parents, who would love the usability and functionality of the Touch/iPhone in something a bit larger and more powerful.
Points for the gorilla joke if that's what you meant : ) 200 lbs lighter, har!
Leaving aside the debate on whether Apple will or should get into the netbook space, your comment that "the netbook has failed to capture the imagination of consumers" is not entirely correct.
Until Amazon created its own separate netbook category a couple of weeks ago, netbooks were 9 of the top 10 selling portable PCs on the site. They are continuously out of stock or on backorder at numerous web sites, and they are selling at a run rate (over the last two quarters) of about 25 million per year. This is up from essentially zero a year ago…and almost all of it so far is consumer. (Enterprises may get around to buying netbooks at some point, but haven't done so in size yet.)
By my estimate, netbooks are running at about 25-40% of total consumer portable PC demand.
Put another way, in the last 12 months more netbooks have been sold than iPhones. And I am not sure I would say the iPhone has not been a consumer succcess…
Duncan
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