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Netbooks – 18 months ago, one did not even know about this word – let alone having this as a family of laptops!  Today, this is the fastest growing market segment within the PC Industry.  Players who shunned this market, are making a beeline for this segment and get a slice of the pie – before it is too late!

Super quick primer-

Netbooks are for –

1. users who are looking for their Nth PC  – chances are he is scouting around for a “low cost” entry Level Laptop!
2. a user for who is looking at a PC with basic features- and a “mobile” home notebook.
3. a user who does not want to spend another $1000 for a laptop- which gets outdated the next day!

Netbooks do not come with any fancy gadgets or tools… they are more positioned as a really “personalized” notebooks at a super affordable costs.

– Atom processors from Intel are the defacto drivers of this product.

– More than 90% of the Netbooks sold run on Windows XP – and no- I am NOT making this up.  Data (shown below for you non-believers) show that the cost of a Netbook with XP is actually cheaper than that of a Netbook with some version of Linux.  And one is not talking of the ubiquitous “Cost of Ownership” that has been killed by most companies!

Netbooks are the future of computing- and in my personal opinion (Intel and Microsoft have made this possible).  Intel with their Atom Processor that created a new market altogether (this has to rate as one of the biggest marketing case studies). Microsoft with their adaptation of the OS – which is now the default in most Netbooks.

Here is some information that I found that is pretty interesting!

DealWatch: Price trends on Netbooks – dealnews.com-http://dealnews.com/features/Deal-Watch-Price-trends-on-Netbooks/292489.html?page=2

Compare the price with the Linux devices (though the pricing is not an apple to apple- the HDD option with XP actually gives a much better customer satisfaction with storage space than that of the SSD users. (Solid State Device).

DealWatch: Price trends on Netbooks – dealnews.com –http://dealnews.com/features/Deal-Watch-Price-trends-on-Netbooks/292489.html

Food for thought… How is it impacting some companies? Here is a nice article on what is happening to HP…an article from Bloomberg!