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Smartbooks are coming, but is there demand?

by Scott Bicheno on 27 August 2009, 09:56

Tags: Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM)

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The term ‘smartbook' will by now be a familiar one to regular readers of HEXUS.channel. For those of you in need of a reminder, it's effectively a netbook form factor, but using a chipset made by a member of the ARM ecosystem, such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon or NVIDIA's Tegra, which promises to require much less power than the current processor of choice in mini-notebooks - Intel's Atom.

The main advantage of having a much lower power processor, in theory, is that the battery can last all day, thus enabling it to be carried around with the same disregard for power leads and recharging as we already experience with mobile phones.

Hence the name - a smartbook is being positioned as the hybrid of a smartphone and a netbook.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that 15 OEMs, including Acer, Samsung and LG were developing smartbooks based on Snapdragon and NVIDIA's Tegra head-honcho reminded HEXUS.channel recently that there are around 50 design wins for Tegra.

However, not everyone's convinced. It's been widely reported that Jerry Shen, the CEO of the maker of the first netbook - ASUS - told an investor conference "currently, I still don't see a clear market for smartbooks".

This is particularly poignant as, to date, ASUS manufacturing subsidiary Pegatron has been one of the first to produce smartbook. Maybe Shen is put-off by the fact that the ARM instruction set can't provide the full Microsoft Windows experience. The return rates on the first, Linux based EeePCs were apparently quite high.

Then again, maybe he can't relate to the kind of needy, egocentric exhibitionist that Qualcomm seems to think will be the core market for smartbooks - as implied by the Qualcomm video below.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 12 Comments

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It's all a bit much now.

A Smartphone is what most people need, I imagine carrying a smartbook around all day would be very inconvenient.
You'd have to have something ‘cloud’ like for data storage otherwise it's just another place to lose files. I'd be tempted for one as a web browser around the house, but it's a gimmick really.

I don't see much business potential either, people either use a smartphone for mobile email or a laptop to actually do work.
My phone is too small for a lot of things, despite being allegedly ‘smart’…

My Netbook (an EEE 901 with a larger battery than usual and speedier 32GB SSD) offers me the long battery life and useful device size, but weighs in fairly chunky still.

I'd be interested in dumping the idea of an all singing phone, just have something fairly standard and then also when I'm doing more than going to sainsburys' I can take my ‘smartbook’ - which in my fantasy world is a device weighing about 800g max, has 5-6 hours of battery life, a decent resolution 8-9" screen (720p ideally), wifi, 3G data and runs a useful Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Debian, just a small Netbook really… oh and costs <£200.
kingpotnoodle
I'd be interested in dumping the idea of an all singing phone, just have something fairly standard and then also when I'm doing more than going to sainsburys' I can take my ‘smartbook’ - which in my fantasy world is a device weighing about 800g max, has 5-6 hours of battery life, a decent resolution 8-9" screen (720p ideally), wifi, 3G data and runs a useful Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Debian, just a small Netbook really… oh and costs <£200.


And you will fit that in your pocket? :rolleyes: With 800g of weight in your pocket all day people will think you have a limp. Can people be bothered to carry a bag with them everywhere they go (excluding women)?
Well if its anything like a Psion I recon they might have a hit. The psion did well because it was just about pocket sized, full usable keyboard and simple to use but tons of business functionality. Remember this is where the symbian OS lots of ‘smart’ phones use came from - including my n96!

Don't forgot - business guys love their blueberries - imagine how much they'd like something similar (just a little bit bigger) with a really useable keyboard and screen.