Either Sharp has succeeded in pricing its upcoming Mebius PC-NJ70A laptop well out of the netbook range, or it just costs an arm and a leg to import this kind of computer from Japan. Either way, PC importer Dynamism is taking preorders on the Sharp Mebius PC-NJ70A for a whopping $999.
While that’s more than twice the price of an average netbook in the US, there are two things worth noting here. First, most netbooks in the US don’t have a secondary 854 x 400 pixel touchscreen display instead of a touchpad.
And second, Dynamism is likely grabbing some of the first units to hit the streets in Japan and shipping them around the world. If and when Sharp releases the PC-NJ70A in the US and Europe, the price could be much, much lower.
So it costs more to buy this Sharp Mebius than a Samsung NC10 and a Nintendo DSi? Well, that makes no sense even on the surface.
Yes, old conventional wisdom was more features ‘requires’ more money from consumers….but that is not how netbooks work. Slim margins and high sell through is what they need to work towards. At $999 this thing will sell poorly, and even the inevitable $100 price cut won’t help.
Sharp isn’t Apple, and this isn’t an iPhone.
The sweet spot of this machine would be between $650 or $700. Even at that price it would be stupid highway robbery, but it is at least inline with retail voodoo. Well, it will be until someone in Taiwan start selling the same thing for $575.
Replace a $4 part with a $12 part **should** make a retail difference of $80.
(12 – 4) * 10 == manufacturing voodoo.
How do you spell: “bragging rights profiteering”?
Is it me, or that ‘netbook’ is running windows vista?
I would really like to try out one of these units, but for $999 I think I will pass. It is a shame. Someone comes out with a netbook that steps outside of the “me too” mentality and it is too expensive to sell in large quantities. The touchscreen / touchpad could be very useful.
No, it is the cost of putting the shift key to the right of the up arrow key.
maybe enormous bezels cost more to ship…