The future of netbooks

[laserblazer]

We are starting to look at a big update to our system. New servers, network upgrade and wireless. We had a supplier in last week and he told us that manufcturers are moving away from Netbooks in favour of Tablets. Is he right?

[Arthur]

We had a supplier in last week and he told us that manufacturers are moving away from Netbooks in favour of tablets. Is he right?

He's correct. Dell, Samsung, Toshiba and Acer have all stopped making netbooks since ultrabooks and tablets are far more profitable. Sales of netbooks are declining fast (it's not hard to see why).

[Michael]

I don't think that's 100% correct. Netbooks for Ultrabooks yes, but not Netbooks for Tablets.

[Arthur]

I don't think that's 100% correct. Netbooks for Ultrabooks yes, but not netbooks for tablets.

It is definitely correct. You only have to look at the devices manufacturers are producing now and in the near future to realise netbooks won't be around for long.

 

Netbooks are being replaced with tablets/slates and other thin-and-light devices - ultrabooks, ARM-based laptops (Samsung Chromebook XE303C12), hybrid laptops (Asus Taichi, Dell XPS Duo 12), ultraportable laptops (Lenovo Thinkpad X131e), other cheap laptops (Acer Aspire V5, HP 635) etc. Which one you choose simply depends on what you are going to be using it for.

 

Lenovo has stopped selling netbooks through its website and hasn't decided if it will start selling them again there in the future, the company said on Friday.

 

The netbook models that were available have sold out and are "not being replaced in the near future," Lenovo spokesman Ray Gorman said via email. He didn't say if Lenovo will continue selling netbooks at retail.

 

"We are having solid success with our IdeaPad Tablet K1 and IdeaPad Tablet A1, and are generating good traffic on our website for those," Gorman said.

 

[...]

 

Lenovo's decision is the latest indicator that consumers are shunning netbooks in favor of tablets and low-cost laptops. Dell has stopped offering netbooks and Hewlett-Packard and Acer have scaled back their offerings.

 

After a few years of resounding success, netbook sales started slowing in the second half of 2010 and have been declining ever since, said IDC analyst Jay Chou. Apple's iPad, which ignited the tablet market, went on sale in April 2010.

 

Netbook shipments totaled 6.3 million in the fourth quarter last year, down 29 percent, or almost a third, from the fourth quarter a year earlier. Netbooks accounted for only 6.8 percent of PC shipments in last year's fourth quarter.

 

All the major netbook vendors saw shipments drop in excess of 30 percent during the fourth quarter, Chou said. Lenovo's shipments dropped 43 percent. (Source)

 

Acer has been dipping into the red over the past year. Its sales have slumped and profitability on what it is making is careening into the floor. The answer? Stop making netbooks.

 

This comes directly from Acer’s CEO J.T Wang in an interview with Dow Jones. The general aim is to completely shift Acer’s focus from making low end products to high end products.

 

“We will shift our strategy to improving profitability from pursuing market share blindly with cheap and unprofitable products,” said Wang. Step one of this will be to kill off the netbook, just like Samsung. Step two is to focus all its energy on Ultrabooks and better tablets than Acer is currently making. (Source)

 

You could say Lenovo's Thinkpad X131e is a netbook, except without the artificial screen and RAM limits imposed by Intel/Microsoft, slow processor and gimped OS (Windows 7 Starter).

 

http://i.imgur.com/KzhUh.jpg

Edited October 20, 2012 by Arthur

[sted]

is anyone sad to see them go?

slow tiny screens and a decent one isnt much cheaper than a faster laptop with a usable screen

[markcuk]

is anyone sad to see them go?

slow tiny screens and a decent one isnt much cheaper than a faster laptop with a usable screen

 

yes I love netbooks backpacking and the like they were great and I will continue to use mine.

[twin--turbo]

Never ever liked them, recomended against the purchase of 300 of them.

 

The purchase went ahead and they have not been successful.

 

 

 

My Asus Transformer though, I use that all the time. Both with and without the Keyboard dock.

 

Rob

[Michael]

You just can't Word Process on a tablet. We'll all be one finger wizards

[laserblazer]

You just can't Word Process on a tablet. We'll all be one finger wizards

 

But that's how kids type anyway and little seems to be done to teach them to type correctly. We used to try but it was never reinforced. When you see how fast kids can text on their mobiles, I'm not sure if it's an issue and by the time they are working, on-screen keyboards may be the norm.

[witch]

We have 33 in one school and 66 in the other and they have been really successful

[Arthur]

You just can't word process on a tablet.

You can with a keyboard cover or keyboard dock.

 

http://i.imgur.com/oaB88.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ZrZel.jpg

[witch]

But with a keyboard dock...it's a netbook, isn't it?

[Arthur]

But with a keyboard dock...it's a netbook, isn't it?

It may look like a netbook, but netbooks usually do not have high-res touchscreens and two batteries (one in the tablet and another in the dock itself).

[Michael]

But it is essentially a notebook/netbook still. It has a physical keyboard, as it's just not possible to type as fast on a tablet (virtual keyboard).

[Arthur]

it's just not possible to type as fast on a tablet (virtual keyboard).

Skip to

.

 

[Chris_Cook]

I hope netbooks don't go completely, The low cost and portability are brilliant. I get a lot more use out of my netbook that I ever did out of my old laptop. I've yet to find a use for the tablet we have at work, other than showing off.

[witch]

It may look like a netbook, but netbooks usually do not have high-res touchscreens and two batteries (one in the tablet and another in the dock itself).

My netbooks do have touchscreens, so there!

[steve]

Interesting article from Stone here regarding the end of Windows 7 Starter, effectively adding £40+ to a netbook price.

[Dos_Box]

Asus did announce the end of it's netbook production last month: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/netbooks-pda-phones/100610-beginning-death-netbook.html, and tbh, we have all seen the price of netbooks creep steadily upwards over the past few years to a point where a laptop then becomes better value.

Often there would be an almost £200 difference between the top and low end with very little hardware wise to tell between them.

I liked netbooks when they were cheap and did what they said on the tin. I just didn't like the huge price creep once they became a fashion item. The move to tablets will be a good one I feel and I suspect that the size and usability of smaller tablets such as the Nexus 7 will see a lot more healthy implementation of differing hardware and OS platforms than happened with netbooks.

[gshaw]

Can't see netbooks having much of a future now, although I reckon the Lenovo x131e will continue to sell as it's more of a business machine. Can you still get them with an i3 rather than AMD CPU?

 

I'm still a bit gutted Windows 8 won't run on original netbook screen resolutions as performance wise it's great for those devices (even runs well on a Samsung Q1 Ultra)

[DavidScott]

Products offering the best of both worlds - netbook and tablet hybrids - appear to offer flexibility whilst retaining core pc functionality, for example keyboard use. Other features including robustness allow a sturdily built product to become mobile and used outside of the standard classroom.

 

Specifications have improved whilst pricing has come down - Classmate 2S - this convertible netbook is being offered around £299 for Windows 7 Starter with Atom dual core processor, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD and a 10hr battery.

[Arthur]

Asus did announce the end of its netbook production last month

Asus' new F201E laptop looks like a good netbook substitute...

 

Specifications

• 11.6″ Screen (1366 x 768)
  
• Dual Core 1.1Ghz Intel Celeron 847
  
• 4GB RAM
  
• 500GB HDD
  
• Integrated Graphics
  
• 3 x USB (inc. 1 x USB 3.0)
  
• HDMI
  
• Ethernet & WiFi
  

 

http://i.imgur.com/mGWzu.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/rGqJ5.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/0CQju.jpg

[Quackers]

Our problem is we have a 1:1 ratio of computers in KS4 (Year 9,10 11) here , and they are all netbooks. Kids check it out before registration, keep it on them all day, and return for charging at home time, have been doing this for last 4 years and its works really well, and its liked by Staff and Kids. We can get Asus Netbooks at £175 each so i'st just an investment of £21,000 each year roughly and we get 3 years out of them. But if these are being killed off it might cause us a few issues unless the replacements are close to the £200 mark.

[sonofsanta]

They are inevitably dying because they're at the bottom end of the market so the profit margins are terrible, and their target market of "portable computing" is being superseded by tablets to a large extent.

 

Unfortunately tablets only replace a small subset of a netbook's functionality, albeit the subset that most consumers care about. Personally I love the handful of netbooks we have - we don't have classrooms of them, but SENCO have a few for certain students and we use one for when we're on walkabout fixing things, makes things a lot quicker and easier if you have AD in the palm of your hand instead of having to find an empty PC nearby to connect to servers.

 

For word processing and web browsing the C-50 based netbooks were awesome, and I mourn their passing. Though probably not as much as AMD, who only managed to make a viable chip for the segment a year or so before said segment vanished.

[SimpleSi]

Coming to this one late so just adding 2 cents worth

I use netbooks because they are

1. Cheap

2. Battery lasts all day

3. Cheap

4. Battery lasts all day.

 

I've managed to kit out quite a few schools so that they can have have a whole class on a computer at a reasonable price and use them sequentialling from one class to the next.

 

If machines come along with batteries that last ALL day, then I wouldn't mind paying a bit more than £200 for them but NOT going to spend £600 (or anywhere close) for one and NOT going to buy them if the battery only lasts 90 mins.

 

(I'd rather beowolf some RaspberryPis into a old 17 inch crts and personally deploy them each lesson!)

 

Simon