NETBOOKS are to get bigger, cheaper, include in-built 3G, have touch functionality and run on Windows rather than Linux according to Lenovo worldwide competitive analyst, Matt Kohut.
In an interview with TechBlorge, Kohut said netbooks were entering their second phase, shuffling away from first-generation limited functionality and the original Intel reference design built to revolve around the Atom.
"Initially people weren't sure what to do with them," explained Kohut, noting that the average Joe didn't understand the point of the little lappies until too late, buying them with the belief they had more functionality than they did ("oh wow, that's small, maybe I can run photo shop").
"As an industry, we ended up with a lot of returns, because the functionality of what netbooks could do was not well communicated," said Kohut, adding that people were now starting to demand more functions and bigger screen sizes. "There is no reason why a netbook has to be a small system," conceded Kohut, reckoning "we are going to see a lot of different sizes of netbook" in the near future.
"Over the next six months, you are going to see a lot of 3G built into these," added Kohut, who also predicted Windows 7 would push Linux out of the netbook market, partly due to it being a "familiar solution", but mostly due to its ability to accommodate touch functionality.
Kohut argues that staying with Windows "just makes more sense" because" you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go," controversially adding that people "didn't know what to do" with Linux, and that despite it saving them between $50 to $100 per netbook, Linux loaded lappies were returned in droves.
Sensing the Linux lynch mob closing in, Kohut changed the subject to overall pricing, saying portable prices would continue to drop as Intel et all improved their ability to integrate whole systems on chips.
While Kohurt says it is true netbooks are forcing prices of portables down, he doesn't believe the notebook market will take too much of a hit. This, said Kohut, is down to Intel who, in a drastic attempt to prevent further cannibalisation of its Celeron offerings, has tried "very hard to limit what netbooks can do."
Chipzilla, says Kohut, wants to promote netbooks as machines only good for noodling around on the interwibble and reading email, because the firm wants punters asking themselves ""does it make more sense to just buy a notebook with the lower end Celeron processor so that it can do everything you want it to do versus buying a higher end netbook that is going to be limited in some way?"
Certainly explains why Intel is getting its knickers all in a twist over Nvidia's Ion platform for netbooks, doesn't it?
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