1. Smartbooks
In 2009 the CES show heralded a lot of the trends that were to dominate the year and we don't expect 2010 to be any different.
Possibly the single most significant product launch of the year will be from Lenovo at CES - the smartbook. Developed in conjunction with Qualcomm and its Snapdragon chipset, smartbook is the generic name - coined by Qualcomm - for a mini-notebook that offers the kind of user experience we've come to expect from a smartphone. I.e. at least all-day battery life, no need to boot-up and instant connectivity.
Qualcomm, Lenovo and the entire ARM ecosystem will be hoping the popularity of the netbook in 2009 transfers to the smartbook in 2010. Indeed, if low price and portability were what end-users to netbooks, extra battery life and 3G connectivity should make smartbooks even more of a no-brainer.
The primary spanner in the works, however, remains the fact that Microsoft still hasn't produced a full version of Windows that runs on the ARM instruction set. SoCs produced by Qualcomm, NVIDIA, TI, etc all use the ARM instruction set, so the x86 crew - Intel - still hold that advantage.
ARM and co. all argue that full Windows is not necessary for a good smartbook experience; they don't expect people to be working on spreadsheets on them and the constant connectivity and consequent access to the cloud makes them somewhat OS agnostic. Those are all valid points, but will they convince the average consumer?
