Rob Enderle thinks there's a battle brewing between tablets and ultra-thin notebooks and he expects that a new hybrid class of ePaper/LCD devices could soon arrive.
As you may be aware, netbooks started out as connected, notebook-like products that were very cheap, did very little, and had high return rates. Thankfully, they quickly evolved into cheap notebooks and in certain ways some of them (especially the ones with NVIDIA Ion graphics) outperformed their much more expensive notebook competitors. It just goes to show that the market was looking for something different and in 2010 two competing ideas will come forward to provide more category differentiation still. First is the tablet, which is being spearheaded by Apple and led to market by offerings like those from the undermarketed Archos and the troubled JooJoo. Second is the “smartbook,” which appears to be favored by the other PC OEMs, cell phone companies and wireless carriers. Let’s talk about this impending battle.
Smart-Tablet: Crippled or Visionary?
It is often kind of funny to see Steve Jobs do his hypocritical dance. He didn’t like video on MP3 players until he sold the video iPod, didn’t like multi-button mice until the Mighty Mouse, and thought Intel processors sucked until he used them. He has also been outspoken about how stupid tablet computers were because, OMG, you needed a keyboard until he brought out the iPhone and iPod touch, both of which are mini-tablets without a keyboard. He also appears to think screen touch is stupid, but making a touch mouse, multi-touch pad, and the coming Apple Touch Pad is brilliant. Wait until touchscreens get cheaper for laptops.
However, the big question is was he right? Do we really need a keyboard in a small laptop-like device or can we live on touchscreens much like we do with the other Apple tablet-like products? Tablets haven’t historically done that well, but then phones like the iPhone didn’t sell well either until Apple built one.
Pixel Qi 3Qi
If you think of this device as more of a big iPhone or iPod touch which allows you to interact with content, provides a vastly better web browsing experience, and is a great platform for a new class of entertainment and short communications applications (like Twitter or Facebook on steroids) this could be the ticket to greatness and the hot product for 2010. Apple does these things almost like clockwork and this could be one heck of a kick-ass product class.
Still, I think it needs a better reading experience to hit its potential, so that it covers both the eBook and multimedia space, and while there is such a display coming to market in the Pixel Qi, it doesn’t look like Apple will be initially getting it. (In fact, only Acer seems to be playing with it at the moment.) So it likely will be great, but it may not be Apple who has the coolest product.
Showing 24 comments
RSSNo, in order to make small work the whole mode of operation needs to be re-invented - completely. One company is doing this, the other is tacking on touch to their main UI. Will the tablet work for business? That depends entirely on the quality of the design of the software & (at last) people will be making purchasing decisions based on this.
Then again if you can't get your head around the reason Steve Jobs added extra mouse buttons, switched to intel & added a screen to the iPod you probably won't get this either.
McDave
You can search for anything and get results. Do a search for MacBook hardware problem or IPhone hardware problem.
Adobe is the only vendor targeting about every mobile device and I don't have nor have I seen issues with flash on my iMac, MacBoook, Win 7 Acer netbook, or HP laptop with Win 7.
If you don't like it - fine, we get that from all of your posts. We get what you're saying and disagree. Move on.
Use the Google and search for "flash crash safari" have fun!
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/a-look-a...
Take that and add an on-screen keyboard and you should be all set. Hopefully Apple will get something like this right in 2010.
The JooJoo AKA Crunchpad is a joke IMO. It will never see the light of day, and it's OS is way too basic.
Netbooks that run Windows do not have this CPU problem either.
Sorry man, but YOU better get your facts straight.
The JooJoo is a tablet, not a smartbook. There is a distinct difference. Between Netbooks, Smartbooks, and Tablets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook
"A smartbook is a concept of a mobile device that falls between smartphones and netbooks, delivering features typically found in smartphones (always on, all-day battery life, 3G connectivity, GPS) in a slightly larger device with a full keyboard. Smartbooks will tend to be designed to work with online applications. Smartbooks are likely to be sold initially through mobile network operators, like mobile phones are today, along with a wireless data plan."
also, Netbooks do have a high return rate. Want some proof? Enjoy this reading:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10239390-64.html
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/06/high-netbo...
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/05/intel-says-ne...
"But according to Intel marketing chief Sean Maloney, there’s another method to the madness: return rates for netbooks had been as high as 30% in some retail channels — the ones where computer sellers didn’t make the limitations of netbooks clear to customers before they shelled out their hard earned cash."
Sorry Sascha, remind me not to listen to your predictions. :(
Thats a XO-2 from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)
How hard is it to do alittle research.
EPIC FAIL
You should rename your website to DIGITALTARDS
between 30 and 35 Million netbooks got sold in 2009... anymore questions?
you also don't understand the smartbook concept, it's not a competitor for any tablet that might come to the market and you are not even naming the good ones... archos? joojoo? gimme a break!
Apple isn't spearheading any tablet market, this market is nearly a decade old!
By the way talking about Pixel Qi, again you could have just contact Mary Lou and ask her why they are using an Acer netbook for it and why they also have tons of others to test their technology. You could have done a simple Google research and you would know that Pixel Qi will make the displays for an upcoming tablet. They even introduce this in january:
http://www.slashgear.com/notion-ink-tegra-andro...
Why not naming mirasol? Because you don't even know them.
Sorry to say that but this is another poor afford and it's wrong in so many ways.
Let's talk about real predictions from someone who lives right in the heart of the industry:
http://www.netbooknews.com/1586/netbook-market-...
yup, that's me and you can be sure that these predictions will come true. ;)
Perhaps if they use OLED displays, iy may help this problem.
As an analyst, they are never 100% right. But when you see them quoted and used for work as much as Rob is, you are likely to see some wrong predictions. He is the most quoted analyst in the industry. If he wasn't so good, he would not have been Fellow at Forrester Research or an advisor to people like IBM, HP etc. Companies like that would not bet millions on someone if they were wrong all the time.
But the feel should come from something too. Hmm.
Fingers are good for pointing, evolution shows that. Nails are handy for accurate pointing too. Or a pointing pen.
No keyboard if possible, but that is difficult.
He predicted the demise of Apple, and the company grew more than 1000%.
He predicted SCO would win a battle against Linux -- SCO lost and is bankrupt.
He predicted that Vista would be a hit, and Sony would kill Blu-ray. Wrong, wrong.
With regard to the smartbooks and tablets... well, I think this time he can be right. But this is a pretty obvious trend for anyone in the industry.
RT
www.anonymous-web.cz.tc
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