Samsung to 'exit netbooks'
Ultrabook focus, apparently
That's it for netbooks then - so far as Samsung is concerned.
The South Korean giant is to phase them out next year in favour of 11.6in laptops and Ultrabooks, French-language site Blogeee.net claims.
In an email purportedly sent by Samsung to its retail partners, the manufacturer said: "Following the introduction of our new strategy in 2012, we [will] stop the product range in 10.1in (netbook) in Q1 2012 for the benefit of ultraportable products (11.6 and 12 inches) and Ultrabooks to be launched in 2012."
The netbook market has slumped over the past couple of years, in no small part thanks to the arrival of sleek, slim tablets. Larger laptops have slimmed down, but most 10in netbooks remain as chunky as they were when they began appearing in the mid-2000s.
If true, Samsung's news will come as a further blow to Intel's attempt to establish its Atom processor as the chip of choice for low-cost, high-portability PCs.
Intel's Atom processor and chipset business revenues plunged 32 per cent on year to only $269m in Q3 2011. Almost all of the Atoms Intel sells go into netbooks. ®
COMMENTS
"The netbook market has slumped over the past couple of years, in no small part thanks to the arrival of sleek, slim tablets."
No - the netbook market has slumped due to the fact that the prices and specs are still more-or-less the same as they were two years ago. Drop the price of netbooks (currently £199-£329) to, say, £129-£229 and watch them shift.
A Tablet is a netbbok without a keyboard.
The EeePC700 was ground breaking. It offered a few simple applets running on a cut down version of Linux. It was small and you could carry it around easily to check email or read the news. At a pinch you could even type on one for small documents. Then they just kept making them bigger and putting Windows on them, while restricting the power of the hardware. They were no longer netbooks, just cramped underpowered notebooks.
Then someone had the bright idea of removing the keyboard, make it a touch screen and using a cut down OS with small apps to make it easy to carry around and do stuff. At a pinch you can even type on one for small documents. Meanwhile notebooks have gone back to being notebooks.
:)
A few factors...
1) What Uncle Slacky says. I already have a netbook, and don't feel any need to buy another one. I would guess a lot of people already have theirs, the new ones are not significantly better, so they aren't going to upgrade just to upgrade. (With the lack of Linux-based ones compared to earlier on they actually have been downgraded.)
2) **Windows**. The largest mistake they've made is to stop shipping most with Linux and stick Windows 7 crippled edition on them, then people that review, test, or use them view them as "barely adequate" or maybe just "inadequate", Win7 is too bloated for an Atom. Mine shipped with Ubuntu and it runs great. They've also let prices creep up and up as they add more RAM, faster Atoms, and so on, to try to accomodate Windows, as well as paying for that Windows license.
3) re Ramazan... Some Atoms *do* have this, my Z520 (1.33ghz Atom) supports VT-X (shows up in /proc/cpuinfo as vmx) as well as flexpriority (which apparently helps interrupt handling in virtual machines.) Also, ARM uses 1/10th the power, not "10 times less" (that would be a negative value.)
4) I have no intention of buying another Intel-based netbook. I'm quite chuffed at the possibility of buying an ARM-based one. I have a keyboard on my phone, and am not interested in a tablet without a keyboard either. So, it'll either be an "ARM Netbook", or a "tablet with a keyboard" -- I don't really give a toss which they call it. I like Android well enough but would prefer to just run Ubuntu for ARM (or some other Linux distro if 11.10 stays as wrecked as it is now...)-- I've run Debian or Ubuntu on MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC, Sparc, and PowerPC (in addition to usual x86) and these are not second-class citizens -- as long as you've got enough RAM and enough processing power, you won't miss x86 a bit.
This is mostly Microsoft's fault. In order to get a windows starter license you had to ship a product with no ram and a tiny low-res screen. Now Macbook Air is the most popular product in the segment.
Netbooks got too big
Started off at 7", then 9", then 10.1" then feck knows. Now it's pretty much a notebook with a hobbled processor at the same price.
