Half a laptop, double the fun

0

Tweet

(This article was first published in The World.)

What is half the size of your laptop, half its price and is wowing web addicts with zippy features? You don't need to be a geek to know the answer; you may have seen it in a well-stocked retailer in Dubai or Delhi. Well, in case you have not being paying attention, it is a Netbook.

Netbooks are not small notebooks in the real sense. They provide Internet access but cannot handle advance graphics and videos. A typical Netbook weighs around 1kg, has a screen less than 10inches, offers wi-fi and costs just around US$400, the price of a smart phone. It's your "Internet on the go".

According to Anand Parthasarathy, a New Delhi-based senior IT expert, "Netbook, Ultra Mobile PC, Alternative PC, call it what you will - as long as you mean a hand held device, smaller than a laptop but with a sizable keyboard that allows you to access the Internet and do basic office routines like text creation, presentations or spread sheets. For a majority of lay users and even for many travelling professionals, this is more than adequate. I think, 2009 looks to be the year of the netbook."

It was the most popular gadget at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Toshiba, Sony, HP, Dell, ASUS, Acer all pitched their new models. Just months after the first netbook hit the market it's already leaping generations with touch and revolving screens.

It all started in 2007 when ASUS - the Taiwan-based company that marks its 20th anniversary this year - launched a portable computer called ASUS EeePC. It had its roots in the one laptop per child (OLPC) project to provide low-cost laptops to school children in emerging markets. ASUS gambled by deciding to sell it in US and the gadget took off. EeePC had Linux operating system but most of the new netbooks have Microsoft's XP OS and run on a new breed of chips like Intel Atom. Atom isn't as fast as the Pentium Processor but it's really small, consumes very little power and, most important, it costs much less.

According to Stanley Wu, country head of Asus, India, "The netbook market currently comprises barely 10 per cent of the notebook market. But due to its portability and great battery back up, it's being preferred to a conventional notebook. The PC market will witness a spurt in the innovations for the netbook category.''

Several key technological trends are powering netbook's versatility: Intel's power efficient chip Atom, NVIDIA's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform, larger Flash memory (soon to be around 80 GB) and Cloud Computing, which enables lay users to store most of their files and pictures on the web and also access web-based office tools.

A report by Gartner, a technology consultant and research provider, said that 5.6 million netbooks were sold in Q3 2008 - far more than the hugely popular iPhone (4.7 million). More than a third of the netbooks were sold in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. By 2012 there may be as many as 50 million people on the move with a netbook tucked neatly in their hands. Netbooks have been shipping for a while to the United Arab Emirates and a variety of models from Lenovo, Toshiba, LG, ASUS, Dell, Samsung and Acer now occupy the frontline shelves at most retail stores in Dubai. Only Apple hasn't joined the netbook race. "We don't know how to make a US$500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that," said Apple's CEO Steve Jobs in October.

Apple's share of the US computer market dropped to 23 per cent in the last quarter of 2008 and shares fell sharply in January after Jobs stepped down from day-to-day running of the company on health grounds. Experts say the cheap netbooks will further widen the price gap between Apple and its rivals. Even companies that manufacture PCs, notebooks and netbooks are worried as the profit margins on the handy machines are very low compared to laptops and desktops. Launching HP Mini 2140 netbook in Las Vegas, company spokesman Mike Hockey painfully emphasised that the device was a "companion" to a larger PC, not a replacement.

Netbook may well be the gadget of 2009, but it remains to be seen whether it'll fuel computer market growth at a time of economic downturn and whether it'll help unleash the power of the Internet amongst the unconnected.