I’m not a big Netbook fan. I admit it. It’s not that I don’t see the great value here–small, portable devices with a full OS for a few hundred dollars. I get it. I really do. However, I have something holding me back from getting one–or dare I say two, three or four Netbooks. What’s that? An iPhone, aka Smartphone.
And this is where I think we’ve got to be careful with the enthusiasm for Netbooks. I completely appreciate their value, however, Smartphones like the iPhone almost trump them for all except maybe typing posts like this or doing other “productivity” work.
To me, the thing to watch though are the features that the connectivity and communication orientation that the Smartphones bring with the flexibility of the OS that the Netbooks offer. All that flexibility is great, but if the software isn’t as competitive as what’s on the Smartphones, then it’s not going to be compelling enough.
In fact, I see a more natural path from Smartphones upstream now that I do PCs downstream. Some of this has to do with temporal pricing, but some of it is that PCs have lots of legacy thinking that weights them down.
There’s no question in my mind, for instance, that a UMPC or MID or Netbook should have a custom shell in Vista. No doubt. But is it going to happen? Unlikely. There are too many legacy reasons why this is too much work with not enough gain.
Start with a Smartphone and the whole conversation is different. Right from the start we know a UI needs to be optimized for its handheld, mobile nature.
And it’s not just the OS or its shell that’s important here. It’s the easily accessible killer apps that are built or bundled in with the device. A desktop-downgraded-to-a-Netbook device will have its apps too, but there’s going to be other “stuff” that makes more sense with bigger displays and power workstations or gamestations. They’ll simply get in the way.
A great start of the art Smartphone today has a good navigation map, real-time traffic updates, easy to get to camera, email, and more. All quite usable, though we haven’t reached Nirvana in their implementations I’ll agree. But the direction is good.
Throw in real-time weather radar and radio access and I think you have a highly compelling device for the midwest of the US–a region you might consider a lagging part of the country. It wouldn’t be any more. Think about what that would mean for device adoption. The freeway bound would have their features, the country-side theirs. Then ask yourself, where’s the Netbook in all of this? It’s probably sitting at home, if there is one.
One more point: It’s not just the OS or the form-factor at issue here. Look at the iPhone. I mean you can really look at it–even outdoors. Yesterday I went for a little walk and all the while I was reading FriendFeed comments on the iPhone. Although I often sit outside with my Tablet PC, I usually do so in the shade where visibility is better and I have a comfortable place to rest the Tablet. The iPhone I can use when I’m moving about. It’s very light and thin; it’s got enough features to be useful to use; and it’s battery lasts long enough to be worthwhile to take with me despite all of its drawbacks. Simply, for more and more things I’m realizing that it trumps my small notebooks and Tablets.
Yes, I’m writing this post on a standard Tablet PC, but let’s think about this. What if there was a larger iPhone? What if Apple went upstream and created a highly mobile device–kind of like a MID or a UMPC or a Netbook, but yet it was more iPhone inspired than Mac inspired? I’d get one–and probably use it a lot. Why? Because it would probably be more inspired by connectivity and communication than sitting and typing–two of the main legacy ways of using a classic PC.
In fact, many times to get people to rethink their notions about Tablets and notebooks and PCs, I often tell people that to me the iPhone is one of the best Tablets I’ve owned. Yeah, it’s lacking some of the essential features of a true Tablet, but my rhetorical statement is meant to inspire thinking about what it really means to be a Tablet and how devices like the iPhone are closer to achieving compelling Tablet features than some true Tablet PCs.
Anyway, my whole point here is that Netbooks are fine. However, are they more about current price points than real benefits? Maybe most notebooks will shrink down to Netbook sizes–there is value in smallness, but my instinct tells me that what we’re seeing here with the unquestioned success of Netbooks is more about unfortunate pricing of other devices and that because of today’s economics, Netbooks make sense. If Intel and the OEMs change the pricing of their notebook lines, Netbooks will still be around, but not at all what they are today.
So finally, watch out as premium features get added to the Smartphones and features get kept out of the Netbooks to keep them priceline competitive. You just may see what I’m seeing–that one day you’ll wake up and find that Smartphone-inspired devices do most of what you want and similarly priced PCs are too stripped down and legacy burdended to be competitive. The result? The PC gets left behind.