A new report by ABI Research claims that 2009 should be the break-out year for ultraportable netbooks. They believe that up to 35 million of the devices will sell this year, with those numbers climbing to over 135 million by 2013.
ABI believes that a large part of the reason for the projected growth is because netbooks are filling an important demand that Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and smartphones are not able to fill, as far as having a clear usage model:
“In recent years, the industry still expected the smartphones to be more than they turned out to be, and most recently, MIDs were thought to be the next big mobile devices segment, but an unclear usage model continues to confuse the market,” ABI analyst Kevin Burden said in a statement. “So today, netbooks’ time has come, and ABI Research expects them to enjoy very strong market growth.”
According to InformationWeek, the report does give credit to smartphones, saying they paved the way for netbooks, because they were able to introduce people to what was possible with mobile devices and web/internet access.