James Kendrick has a great article about the rise of the netbooks and how they are changing the laptop landscape these days, and why peoples’ views (mainstream users) are changing. He points to the iPhone as changing how people are viewing netbooks. They are basically looking for cheap devices where they can, as JK points out, “jump on the Internet”, do email and get their photos off their cameraâ€. The iPhone was the major turning point – it showed people that they didn’t need a huge setup to access the internet, check email, etc. With the Acer Aspire One hitting $400 (and with Dell and Lenovo possibly hitting that area) with a decent sized screen and keyboard, all of the sudden many people who wouldn’t normally consider a second computer in the house, or a laptop (or even a second laptop) are seeing how easy it is to hop on the internet, check email, etc., and they want that and it’s now in their price range.
He thinks, and I agree, that the major turning point will be when they are available in the big-box retailers. We are already seeing this with some – Circuit City is a good example with the Acer Aspire One (albeit many Circuit Citys have them on hand, but they aren’t always displayed because they don’t have a good way of securing them, according to one CC employee I talked to over the weekend). Best Buy seems wishy-washy at times but will probably start offering a lot more Asus Eee PCs as we get closer to the holidays at the end of the year. Wal-Mart will probably accelerate things as well. By the end of this year, they will probably have three (if not more) different offerings from three different brands.
I have two major concerns though:
