There’s no doubt that 2009 was an excellent year for Netbooks — the latest DisplaySearch reports that Netbook shipments are forecast to have grown by 103 percent year over year by the end of 2009.
Part of the reason for this is that the average selling price has declined about 15 percent, making Netbooks affordable for just about anyone. The price decline is expected to continue in 2010, but will we keep buying Netbooks?
DisplaySearch forecasts that while Netbooks will continue to sell well, they will lose ground to other devices, with ultra-low voltage processors, that will give better and faster performance than Netbooks and yet remain “affordable,” with pricetags of less than $500.
Netbooks gave the world what it was missing: A truly portable device that was small enough to take anywhere yet still give the user access to the Internet and the ability to perform basic word processing and other tasks when on the go.
As such, they are ideal as secondary computers or as primary devices for those getting their first computers.
So how long can it all continue?
“Mini-notes continue to be a significant piece of the notebook PC pie, in terms of both units and revenue. However, our long-term outlook is that the mini-note share of the notebook PC market has stabilized, and will remain at approximately 20 percent through 2011 before starting to erode,” said DisplaySearch director of notebook research, John F. Jacobs.
“While mini-notes offer lower [average starting prices] and are thinner and lighter than notebook PCs, the performance of larger notebook PCs continues to improve while prices continue to steadily decline, increasing the performance gap while narrowing the price gap,” Jacobs continued.
In all, he concluded, though prices should continue to decline, the end financial result in 2010 should be a flat year, as demand should continue to increase somewhat.
So it would seem we are not quite fed up with Netbooks. Netbooks as we know them today are nothing like they were two years ago and although we may not call them Netbooks in the future, we’ll still want a low-cost portable PC, no matter how they package it up or what they call it.
