“We just don’t agree with the evaluation or the ‘Ohmigod, Apple has to do it!” tone of the post.”

That’s what I don’t get. Why does anyone care if Apple makes a netbook or not? They either will or they won’t. Is it some sort of need for legitimatization? If Apple makes a netbook, then that somehow justifies the cries that the netbook is supposedly the next big thing? If you guys are convinced already that the netbook is the next big thing, then you don’t need Apple or Jobs in your court, the situation will stand on its own. And if Apple loses out, so what?

And with iPhones, iPod Touches, and laptops selling so well, why would they need to make a “netbook” (even as netbook designs creep closer to full size notebooks)?

I wouldn’t mind a poll. How many netbook advocates think a netbook by definition is inexpensive (say $200-$600ish)? Is that the key characteristic? Or only a possibility? Size is what is the defining factor, cost not a concern?

Joe

“The whole point is that the netbook market is much larger than many realize. I have seen figures of 30 million sold and analysts expect that to quadruple over the next 3 years. That’s Apple-sized if anything is.”

I think we understood what the point was. We just don’t agree with the evaluation or the ‘Ohmigod, Apple has to do it!” tone of the post.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/565108/ref=pd_ts_zbw_pc_565108_more?&pf_rd_p=364098901&pf_rd_s=right-4&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=565108&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1W4YCGSSTSC5H260WSNX

The list is dominated by netbooks. Great?

Wrong. The first full-sized Windows notebook that makes the list comes in at #19.

Aside from this HP, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE FULL-SIZED WINDOWS NOTEBOOK in the Top 25.

Dell and HP are going to be decimated by the netbook phenonenon. These companies can’t afford to provide quality customer support selling machines that are twice as expensive – it’s well-established that a single support call on a machine will wipe out any profits.

When the majority of your sales are netbooks, I hope for all the hype, you get to enjoy the support you will receive should any problems develop (which will be none).

It’s just simple mathematics – netbooks aren’t old enough yet, but support costs will kill the phenomenon. There’s no money to be had here, from a business perspective. Companies are basically committing delayed financial suicide embracing netbooks when most of them can barely generate profits selling $1000 PCs.

Apple, on the other hand, is small enough that it can continue selling all the MacBooks it can make and still grow 25% a year in units, revenue, AND profits.

This analysis, while interesting, is flawed. The reason? Because I suspect netbooks are seriously cannibalizing full-featured notebook sales. Sure, they sold millions of these things, but how many millions less of full-sized notebooks did they sell?

That’s the real question.

And Apple’s notebook growth and iPhone growth show so far that MacBooks and iPhones don’t compete with each other.

Not true with netbooks, and that will be all the difference when makers like Dell and HP report their numbers next quarter, i.e. negative revenue increase, and flat or declining revenue, thanks to netbooks undermining their bottom line.

Sorry, I don’t buy it that the netbook market is a fad. My guess is it is just starting to really explode. Time will tell I guess.

Sure there are people for whom the netbook isn’t the right size. I would argue however that there are lots of people for whom it *is* the right size. Are you really going to buy each one of your children a full-sized notebook every few years? I think the netbook phenomenon just might see a lot of American families doing just that. Keyboard too small? Probably not for them.

Screen too small? You could say the same thing about the iPhone, and yet the iPhone is exploding and changing the whole smartphone market. Sure the smartphone market has existed for a long time, but the iPhone has dramatically changed its size. The iPhone just recently passed the MOTOROLA RAZR in volume to become the number one PHONE. Not smart phone, PHONE. All sorts of non-business people are buying the iPhone. And will look at the Google Phone and others as a result.

What will Apple do? I have no idea. But I do think they could sell a product at a price point beneath the current MacBook and make a lot of money. The current MBA is *not* the product. Maybe the numbers will come out and surprise me, but I doubt it. Even the new one that resolves some of the problems with it isn’t the product.

If you think Apple won’t invest the sort of money it would take to create a netbook, look at the amount of money they wasted to develop the MBA!

Netbooks are pushing the future in a lot of areas, and I think Apple would find that they would learn a lot about how to make better MacBooks buy building a netbook. Mini-SSDs, integrated 3G with carrier contracts, PCIe connectors, 1.8″ drives, extreme low power devices, fanless designs, ultralight, very low cost, etc etc. These are all things they won’t know as much about if they don’t participate in the netbook market.

The whole point is that the netbook market is much larger than many realize. I have seen figures of 30 million sold and analysts expect that to quadruple over the next 3 years. That’s Apple-sized if anything is.

Steve Jobs said that netbooks were a niche market and that Apple was going to “wait and see.” Exactly what is unreasonable about that? They are a niche market (compared to the overall smartphone market, for example, which is the accurate comparison) but netbooks seem to be taking off, so Apple’s going to keep an eye on it.

Next up: the number of netbooks sold versus the number of Coach handbags. Should Coach do a netbook?

I believe Apple WILL release a netbook eventually regardless of what they tell the public spin machine. If you can’t wait you can always just install OS X on your favorite atom netbook today.

I think the issue for Apple is how long they can afford not to jump into netbook, or low cost laptop market. The side-effect of netbook boom is the overall drop in laptop price. This will affect Mac sales at certain point, if not already, and Apple market share has reached the point that they cannot sell Macs at premium because “it just works”. Apple needs to either lower the cost of current laptop lines or introduce lower priced netbooks to entice customers to Mac world and hope they upgrade for “full” Mac experience.

Ian’s got a valid point here. Apple would have to go completely back to the drawing board on a netbook design, moreso even than the MacBook Air. For all that the MBA changed, at the end of the day, it’s using a typical Apple display, and the same keyboard layout that existed on the MacBook. Ergonomics weren’t a big deal, it was the same thing, only thinner.

When you have to get hardware into a smaller footprint, now Apple has to go back to testing out 92% (or worse, 80%) width keyboards. Then they have to test out anything from an 8.9″ to an 11.3″ display, depending on how much bezel they can trim. Then there’s pointing device positioning, button layout, ports, etc.

Now, I *can* see them trimming the MBA down massively, and releasing something similar to the HP Mini 1000 in the end, which does have a very 12″ Powerbook look to the keyboard layout and hinge design, but the side-mounted mouse buttons and a tiny touchpad would probably not fly, and the engineering and testing involved in getting *that* off the ground would be significant.