The Death of Netbooks?
Netbook sales have fallen drastically over the last several months. The iPad was announced several months ago. Some have already declared the iPad victor over the netbook. Did the "magical" device truly overthrow this staple of coffeeshop computing from the last three years or is there some other force at work?
First things first, the iPad is not really a netbook replacement. Steve Jobs declared that netbooks weren't good for anything at the iPad announcement, but millions of consumers have seen otherwise. Their ability to multitask indiscriminantly paired with faster, more advanced parts and components, and greater focus on power management have corrected or at least started to remedy many of the pitfalls of earlier netbooks. Need HD video decoding? Broadcom's Crystal HD chip or Nvidia ION can do that. Want to store a music library? Portable hard drives are cheap and the 2-8GB flash drives formerly the standard in netbooks have been replaced with hard disks 160GB or larger. Seven inch screens aren't even available anymore as 9-12" displays have taken center stage. The days of a 2.5hr battery are on the way out as more and more advertise 9 or more hours per charge. Keyboard have gotten larger and sturdier, multitouch trackpads are more common, a plethora of ports and options including HDMI and WWAN pervade store shelves. The computing environment is familiar, files can easily be transfered between a netbook and a desktop, opened using the same software, and edited without having to adjust to any new paradigm or deal with too many compromises. The netbook is laptop for people who don't need or can't afford a laptop. The hoops and hurdles to clear for an iPad to accomplish the same tasks are numerous and frustrating. Limited office utlities and import/export options, tight control over available software, few ports for peripherals and even those are tightly controlled, and a mandatory shift from keyboard/mouse to touch(/keyboard) make the transition anything but seamless.
As for the declining sales, there are a few factors at play. These small subnotebooks entered the market a few years back as a cheap computing option that retained familiarity to a home computer in an ultraportable shell. It started a "good enough" mentality where significant cost savings really could make up for a significant drop in horsepower, a tradeoff that was unthinkable just months prior. In the wake of the booming market, Intel went full bore, releasing the Atom processor, the first CPU specifically designed for netbook-like devices and the market has never been the same and that's not necessarily a good thing. The performance growth of netbooks has been stagnant. The overdue upgrade from Diamondville to Pinetrail (N200 series to the N450) brought virtually insignificant real world improvements, while architectural advances in other processor lines brought vastly superior machines to market.
Questionable build quality had many netbooks meet an early end, their owners losing faith in the lasting power of such a cheap machine, and marginal upgrades in subsequent generations failed to provide incentive to upgrade, especially as prices for netbooks climbed from an impulse-buy $200 to over $400. Meanwhile, the multitude of new processors on the market pushed down prices of older parts allowing the $700 laptops of last year to reach netbook prices with far greater performance and capability. A push by Intel along with computer manufacturers like Asus, MSI, and Sony have the battery-friendly CULV processors to consumers at a fraction of their price just two years ago. A new wave of ULV's look to keep prices and power consumption more or less stable while using the Core 2010 architecture for Core i3/i5/i7 variants.
The iPad hasn't killed netbooks; netbooks have. Unable to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of portable computers, netbooks closed the window on their own relevance. As a value option, they not nearly as attractive as they were three years ago. From a performance standpoint, the gap between them and full-sized notebooks is growing at a rapid rate, while the cost difference is constantly shrinking. Retail stores frequently have at least one laptop at a lower cost of entry than their higher tier netbooks. Even mobile phones have been enjoying a ride on a growth curve with newer, faster hardware quickly being integrated to make more powerful devices every few months. Netbooks, instead, rested on their laurels, expecting their monstrous sales to continue, failing to provide any significant changes in favor of a slimmer profile, taxtured trackpad, or extra media keys on a keyboard. The market is dead, and that's not a bad thing. UMPC's also failed only to be resurrected with gusto some years later. There remains a chance for the reboot of subnotebooks to gain steam and vastly improve upon the concept and once again shatter preconceptions about cost versus performance.
First things first, the iPad is not really a netbook replacement. Steve Jobs declared that netbooks weren't good for anything at the iPad announcement, but millions of consumers have seen otherwise. Their ability to multitask indiscriminantly paired with faster, more advanced parts and components, and greater focus on power management have corrected or at least started to remedy many of the pitfalls of earlier netbooks. Need HD video decoding? Broadcom's Crystal HD chip or Nvidia ION can do that. Want to store a music library? Portable hard drives are cheap and the 2-8GB flash drives formerly the standard in netbooks have been replaced with hard disks 160GB or larger. Seven inch screens aren't even available anymore as 9-12" displays have taken center stage. The days of a 2.5hr battery are on the way out as more and more advertise 9 or more hours per charge. Keyboard have gotten larger and sturdier, multitouch trackpads are more common, a plethora of ports and options including HDMI and WWAN pervade store shelves. The computing environment is familiar, files can easily be transfered between a netbook and a desktop, opened using the same software, and edited without having to adjust to any new paradigm or deal with too many compromises. The netbook is laptop for people who don't need or can't afford a laptop. The hoops and hurdles to clear for an iPad to accomplish the same tasks are numerous and frustrating. Limited office utlities and import/export options, tight control over available software, few ports for peripherals and even those are tightly controlled, and a mandatory shift from keyboard/mouse to touch(/keyboard) make the transition anything but seamless.
As for the declining sales, there are a few factors at play. These small subnotebooks entered the market a few years back as a cheap computing option that retained familiarity to a home computer in an ultraportable shell. It started a "good enough" mentality where significant cost savings really could make up for a significant drop in horsepower, a tradeoff that was unthinkable just months prior. In the wake of the booming market, Intel went full bore, releasing the Atom processor, the first CPU specifically designed for netbook-like devices and the market has never been the same and that's not necessarily a good thing. The performance growth of netbooks has been stagnant. The overdue upgrade from Diamondville to Pinetrail (N200 series to the N450) brought virtually insignificant real world improvements, while architectural advances in other processor lines brought vastly superior machines to market.
Questionable build quality had many netbooks meet an early end, their owners losing faith in the lasting power of such a cheap machine, and marginal upgrades in subsequent generations failed to provide incentive to upgrade, especially as prices for netbooks climbed from an impulse-buy $200 to over $400. Meanwhile, the multitude of new processors on the market pushed down prices of older parts allowing the $700 laptops of last year to reach netbook prices with far greater performance and capability. A push by Intel along with computer manufacturers like Asus, MSI, and Sony have the battery-friendly CULV processors to consumers at a fraction of their price just two years ago. A new wave of ULV's look to keep prices and power consumption more or less stable while using the Core 2010 architecture for Core i3/i5/i7 variants.
The iPad hasn't killed netbooks; netbooks have. Unable to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of portable computers, netbooks closed the window on their own relevance. As a value option, they not nearly as attractive as they were three years ago. From a performance standpoint, the gap between them and full-sized notebooks is growing at a rapid rate, while the cost difference is constantly shrinking. Retail stores frequently have at least one laptop at a lower cost of entry than their higher tier netbooks. Even mobile phones have been enjoying a ride on a growth curve with newer, faster hardware quickly being integrated to make more powerful devices every few months. Netbooks, instead, rested on their laurels, expecting their monstrous sales to continue, failing to provide any significant changes in favor of a slimmer profile, taxtured trackpad, or extra media keys on a keyboard. The market is dead, and that's not a bad thing. UMPC's also failed only to be resurrected with gusto some years later. There remains a chance for the reboot of subnotebooks to gain steam and vastly improve upon the concept and once again shatter preconceptions about cost versus performance.