Business Description
Just a glance at the specs sheets will state the obvious. Yet, millions of people across the world have bought a netbook, when in reality they hoped to get a notebook, and fuelled frenzy over the “tiny, cute laptop” that even after one and half years shows no sign of abating. The results, if you ask someone who bought a netbook believing it to be something else, are not too pretty.
The beginning
The first netbook appeared late in 2007 when Asus, borrowing some ideas from the project One Laptop Per Child, came out with Eee PC. Powered by an Intel Celeron processor, the original Eee PC was a 7” device, primarily meant for web surfing (hence the name netbook) and was aimed at people who travel a lot and find the prospect of accessing emails on 3” screens of smart phones a little too daunting. But this changed in the summer of 2008 when Intel launched Atom. This tiny processor proved to be a runway hit with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Asus, Acer and MSI. Intel knew that because of its power efficiency — just 2-3 watts on average — Atom was primed for great things, but it had never imagined it would be a game changer.
In the laptop market there is a huge gap between ultra-portable laptops — typically 12” screen, nearly 4 hours battery life, and less than 2kg weight — and normal 14-15” laptops. While a lot of people want ultra-portable laptops, price forces them to settle for the 3kg ones. Computer manufacturers know about this gap, but then, ultra-portables are also their cash cows. The hardware that goes into sleek machines carries a lot of premium and OEMs are not ready to cut down on this premium.
When Atom arrived, paired with Intel’s 945 chipset, OEMs sensed an opportunity to make money by satiating the demand for ultra-portable laptops with the new combo. Deviating from the original netbook formula, they soon began to offer devices with bigger screen size. They touted notebook-like features for these devices, when in reality Atom and the accompanying hardware, which does not even include an internal CD/DVD drive, is not meant to give end users a full-fledged PC experience.
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