Will consumers take to the smartbook?

The netbook's initial failure serves as an important lesson.

The first netbook was the Asus Eee PC 701 which ran on Linux but on Intel's chips.

It was interesting for its low-cost proposition but you could not install apps on it and it did not reach mass adoption until later when the vendors installed Windows XP into the devices.

I still remember the Eee PC's launch in Singapore in December 2007 at the Sitex show at the Singapore Expo.

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Next to the Asus booth were geeks from tech forum VR-Zone.com offering a discounted Microsoft-backed deal to convert Linux to Windows XP plus an option to install Microsoft Office 2007 for a little extra.

All 200 to 300 Eee PC units were snapped up.

The question really boils down to whether consumers want a souped-up smartphone or a dumbed- down laptop.

I share IDC's veteran analyst Bryan Ma's reservations about the smartbook, which he said will have to fight an uphill battle against the current netbook.

Nobody will carry two mini-laptops around, so they will ultimately have to make a choice between the netbook and the smartbook.

Mr Glen Burchers, Freescale's director of global consumer segment marketing from the United States, says he is pushing for tablet-style smartbooks simply because 'when consumers see a clamshell device, they expect Windows to run on it'.

Mr Burchers feels that the smartbook is best targeted at the youth of today, who are inseparable from YouTube and Facebook.

Studies show that the largest group of Web users are under 30 and a big part of this group are schoolgoing children and teens.

The challenge, however, is that school children are increasingly using PCs in school, and chances are that these PCs need to have Windows to run the schools' apps.

In the end, I think it all boils down to price.

If I am offered a dumbed-down netbook with longer battery life but which cannot run my games, Word and Excel, I expect to be paying much less for it.

Both Freescale and Qualcomm expect smartbooks to go as low as US$200 (S$280), which is almost half the price of a basic netbook.

But so far, models like the Lenovo Skylight are going for US$499 which will make it even more expensive than many netbooks.

For me, that is just too much.

I do, however, welcome the smartbooks, despite the confusion they will cause to consumers, as they will herald the arrival of many new innovative devices trying to fill the huge gap between the laptop and the smartphone.

For analysts, their work has been cut out for them.

IDC's Mr Ma will be tracking the sales numbers of smartbooks, but for now he is still figuring out where to fit them in his category of products.

ginlee@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The Straits Times.

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