Netbooks may disappear, as a class, already next year
As first-tier notebook vendors continue to push the specifications for netbook products set by Intel and Microsoft, notebook industry sources are afraid the boundary between netbooks and notebooks might disappear by 2009, with netbooks becoming part of vendors’ notebook lines instead of a whole new market.
Acer was the first vendor to break the restrictions set by Microsoft when it announced the launch of netbook using a 120GB hard drive before Microsoft said it would ease hard drive capacity limits set in the Windows XP OEM license.
Asustek Computer also recently broke Intel’s restriction that products with Atom processors must not feature a PCI Express port with the launch of its N10 notebook, which uses an Intel Atom processor and features a built-in discrete graphics card.
If first-tier vendors continue to only pursue market share without considering the impact netbooks have on the notebook market, the sources expect Intel’s netbook standards will become just a set guide lines and the term netbook will completely lose its original meaning. As a consequence the average selling price (ASP) of notebooks will be brought down.
Source:
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Hardware
