I always get a kick out of reports that predict what will be happening 4 years from now in an industry segment that didn’t even exist 2 years ago. So I’m taking Semico‘s recent prediction that 22% of the mobile PC market will belong to netbooks in 2013 with a grain of salt.
According to the report, 59 million netbooks will ship that year. Semico is including ARM based systems in that figure as well as x86 based machines. Of course, Qualcomm would prefer to think of ARM-powered mini-laptops as smartbooks, and it remains to be seen whether there’s really a market for 3G enabled smartbooks running Linux, Google Android, or Windows CE. And when it comes to x86 based netbooks, we’re seeing mini-laptops getting more powerful and larger all the time. It’s certainly possible that more than 1 in 5 laptops sold in 2013 will be low power cheap, and ultraportable. But will they still be called netbooks? I’m thinking it’s too early to tell.
via Netbook Choice
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BoloMKXXVIII
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BoloMKXXVIII
