Why Microsoft May Desire the Netbook to Decease
Published January 21, 2012 | 
Microsoft thinks it might be. In reporting record revenues, the software giant sunk this nugget: netbooks represented 8 pct of the company’s PC sales a year ago. Now, it’s down to 2 percent.
That casts a dim light on Microsoft’s Windows 7 Starter Edition, the low-cost version of Windows 7 that effectively killed exit the Linux-based netbook. Merely isn’t it in Microsoft’s best stake to see the netbook fade away, regardless?
Patrick Moorhead, a former corporate fellow with AMD and straightaway master at Moor Insights and Strategy, has watched the traditional netbook an Atom-based, small-form-factor notebook that costs almost $399 vanish from shop shelves. Netbooks get been relegated to Best Buy’s online shelves, for example, while higher-margin, recurring-revenue products similar smartphones dominate its floors. Desktops are a thing of the past.
You could forgive Moorhead for thinking that the AMD Brazos platform, combined with a 10.6-inch screen and a good keyboard “crushed” the netbook market. Simply what’s make is that consumers loved the cost point, but wanted more for their money.
“In the end, and I receive been very make on this since daytime one, is that netbooks are only inexpensive notebooks that went popular,” Moorhead said. “They got replaced by higher-quality notebooks that were fulfilled by a identical similar price and position in the market.”
According to Moorhead, the succeeding of the netbook isn’t the tablet, as Acer seemed to imply with its decision to throw its chapeau into the tablet market finally year. Instead, the future is something similar the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, which oscillates between a tablet and a notebook, depending on whether it’s in a docked or undocked configuration.
