The Hindu : Front Page : Netbooks for the youth market

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Sunday, Feb 15, 2009
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Netbooks for the youth market

Shanthi Kannan

These come in handy for browsing Internet, chatting, playing music or video

Compact and energy-efficient, Netbooks are priced between Rs. 23,000 and Rs. 25,000

Chennai: Netbooks or mini laptops have gained popularity as personal gadgets during 2009. They are light, compact, highly portable, inexpensive, and energy efficient.

The difference between Notebooks and Netbooks lie in their functionality. Notebooks are basically laptops. They have all the functions of PCs but more portable. Netbooks, however, are low-cost portable devices that have only the basic functions of computers. They usually lack the power to run complex software applications or games.

Netbooks come in handy for browsing the Internet, chatting, and playing music or video. Notebooks, on the other hand, do all the heavier tasks that PCs do.

So what makes Netbooks so attractive? Pricing and size stand out as the major factors for their growth. Today, fully functional Netbooks cost less than smart phones. They are priced between Rs. 23,000 and Rs. 25,000, while Notebooks cost about Rs. 50,000 or more. High-end Notebooks come close to Rs.1 lakh. Netbooks come with a screen size that varies between 17.5 cm and 25 cm. But the conventional Notebooks have a screen size of 25 to 42.5 cm. The added advantage is the long battery life.

Considering the value for money, the market expects Netbooks to grow, not only in metros but also in Tier-II and III cities. The targeted customers for Netbooks will be students, says L. Ramprasad, vice-president, Transactional Consumer Sales, Lenovo India.

Netbooks made their entry when the Taiwan-based multinational PC maker, ASUS, launched EeePC in 2007. For about a year, there were not enough takers for this product.

Subsequently, the U.S-based desktop manufacturer Everex launched its CloudBook in mid February last year. This was followed by MSI (Wind), Dell (Inspiron Mini), HP (HP Mini), HCL (MiLeap Series), Acer (Aspire one) and Lenovo (Ideal Pad-S series).

They are targeted at cloud computing users who rely on servers and require a less powerful application. They have a wide range of light-weight operating systems like Linux and Windows XP, which have less processing power than the traditional operating systems in laptops.

The demand for Netbooks should grow slowly, with increasing availability of Internet bandwidth and GPRS/3G mobile connectivity.

Cloud computing

It is estimated that in the future around 90 per cent of computing globally will be done through “cloud computing.” Cloud computing is an emerging computing technology that relies on central servers for the delivery and maintenance of applications. Today, Google applications, Maps, and Gmail are all based on the cloud computing.

PC makers such as HP, Acer, Asus, MSI, Lenovo, Samsung and HCL are eyeing a decent market share for their Netbooks. Though these are powered by Intel’s atom and AMD’s Puma processors, the keypads often pose a problem. The keypads are not on a par with conventional laptops.

Stanley Wu, product manager, Notebooks and Eee PC, ASUS (India), says that Netbooks from his company have an exclusive super hybrid engine for a much longer battery life. Further, they also pair a 1.3M pixel webcam with its wireless Internet connection capabilities.

Netbooks have begun to eat into the market share of laptops and also iPhone, by recording a sales figure of 9 lakh units across the world in the third quarter of 2008. The sales in 2012 are estimated to increase up to 50 million. Manufacturers expect this to emerge as one of the favourites in the market.

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