Netbooks may be the fastest-growing niche in the computer spectrum but Apple, in its infinite wisdom, still appears to be in no hurry to come up with one that meets its exacting standards.
"We’ve
got some ideas, but right now we think the products there are inferior and will not
provide the experience to customers that they’re happy with," Tim
Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer and acting CEO, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Wednesday.
The issues, from Apple’s perspective? Low-powered CPUs, cramped
keyboards and small displays are not enough to satisfy customers. And — oh yeah — netbooks
are "principally based on hardware," Cook said, while repeatedly stressing on the call that Apple believes "software is the key
ingredient."
This may just be a phase in the company’s familiar "we’ll-do-it-when-we’re-good-and-ready-or-not" approach to product development (and it is hard to argue with success). But the economic downturn is driving sales of netbooks — inexpensive, low-powered, miniature
notebooks — through the roof. Powered by Intel Atom processors, netbooks usually measure 8
to 10 inches in screen size, and pricing on average hovers around $300 to $500. Despite frustratingly small keyboards, trackpads and screens consumers are consumers don’t seem to mind the compromise in these tough economic times.
Evidence that the netbook price point can be found in Apple’s own earnings report. On the call Apple announced it sold a record number of iPods in the quarter: 22.7 million. With iPods priced no higher than $400, it’s clear that this cost sweet spot is attractive to consumers.
And this seems to be the start of a significant upward trajectory for the category: ABI Research forecasts that manufacturers will ship 200 million ultramobile devices, including netbooks, by 2013 — which is about the same
anticipated size as the entire laptop market worldwide. And analysts
predict the netbook market will grow at least 100 percent in 2009.
Though Apple is stalling on offering netbooks, that doesn’t mean they’re ruling out the idea entirely. Cook’s
statements suggest Apple could be devising a product that fits into the
netbook category, and a new software platform will blow away operating
systems that current netbooks are running. We’ve seen all this before with [pick an Apple consumer product], including pre-release disbelief about slow-walking the process from journalists, pundits and the geeky chattering class.
In an October 2008 conference call, CEO Steve Jobs said Apple could not
produce a notebook in the netbook price range that wasn’t a "piece of
junk." However, similar to Cook’s statement Wednesday, Jobs did say Apple has "interesting ideas" if the netbook category evolves.
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Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com
Looks like Palm wants to play ball at Mobile World Congress in February, seeing how they’ve got a mysteriously password-protected site going called palmmwc2009.com — a domain name that leaves little to the imagination. There’s no telling what our new crush has in store, but if we had to guess, it’d probably be an official unveiling of the 3G GSM version of the Pre; MWC’s a European show, after all, and the CDMA version isn’t doing ’em much good over there. Either that, or they’re unveiling a WiMAX Foleo… or maybe webOS was a smokescreen for the real Nova. Do us a big favor and contribute some baseless speculation in comments, alright?
