Tablets in, netbooks out, forecasts analyst Apple will have shipped 4.2m iPads during Q3, rising to 5m in Q4, market watcher DisplaySearch has forecast. In all, the Mac maker will sell around 13.2m of the tablets in 2010, DisplaySearch's numbers show, before almost doubling that total to 24.8m in 2011. That's not to say, that Apple's rivals, like Samsung, LG, Motorola …
I see tablet/iPad devices fulfilling a different role to a netbook, in my life they wouldn't compete. But I'm not a typical user.
To me they would fill a whole between my netbook and my phone.
My laptop has grown too big to want to carry around much. But it needs that because too much on my life is on there.
My netbook is a handy device to take around when I can't be bothered to lug around the full laptop. I can easily use it in the office, computer room, coffee shop, bog... etc. But unless I was doing something specific it would end up in the living room with me.
The phone goes everywhere, Oh I could wind the clock back 20 years and not need to do this, but me world doesn't work like that any more.
I can surf the web and handle emails etc from there, but it isn't ideal. The screen is a bit cramped and I'm rapidly becoming an old git and can't see it that easily for too long.
So there is room for something to fit between the two.
On evening where I'm stuck at a desk because of the back ground flow of email is too high to deal with on the phone, then a tablet might allow better monitoring from the sofa.
For those who live every minute of their lives in facespace or chat rooms, then they might find a tablet a better fit than a netbook, they don't need a full PC and so the tablet might be a superior device for them
But you can pry my net book out of my cold dead fingers when I'm gone. For me at least they aren't a competitor.
If you have a phone, tablet, and netbook, you then also have a notebook? I see the iPad as a real nice fit between my PC and my phone, I do not require BOTH a tablet and a netbook. There is VERY little a netbook is capable of that an iPad or other tablet can not accomodate, especially if you include VNC back to a main PC... There's so little i would do on a netbook that could not wait until I got back to a notebook 'd hesitate to carry around. a 10" ipad screen vs a 10 or 11" netbook screen (at almost certainly lower resolution on the netbook btw), cramped has little to do with inches, but pixels.
Personally, I find the 15"MBP actually very easy to tote about anyway. 6+ hours (reliably) on a charge, and it's only 4lbs. A netbook might save me 1 lb, and 2", but its sub par performance eliminates any need to want to do anything on it the iPad can't do all on its own. The very rare cases when I'm out and about without a notebook and absolutely have to run a PC app there's no iPad equv for, VNC back to my desktop and its covered....
>That's slightly higher than the 36m netbooks and non-iPad tablets DisplaySearch has forecast will be sold in 2010, but not so very far off
4M is quite a long way off - around 25 to 30% of the total number of iPads that will be sold in 2010.
Better headline would have been something like 'netbooks still outselling iPads by 300%'
That's standard Reg spin for ya. If you are nice enough to Apple, they might send free stuff. Why do you think that so many TV shows put Apple notebooks in their shows? I've heard more than a couple DVD commentaries of TV shows that freely admit to using Apple notebooks simply to get free stuff.
Netbooks and non-iPads COMBINED are not 200% of iPad sales currently, and that accommodates Apple's heavy backorder status, and limited international rollout. Doubling the number of nations, Apple could very easily ship 5-6m iPads in Q4, and continue to grow to 6-7m per quarter in 2011. At the same time, limited demand will see many netbook models leaving the market, especially better configured ones that verge on notebook specs, and the fragmentation of android and webOS based tables, and poor market support in the app communities will continue to keep them expensive, and a risky buy.
2 dozen netbook manufacturers, lower prices than iPads, better specs than iPads, and yet Apple is potentially going to be a full half of the market before the end of 2011.
Don;t get me wrong, I'm an android fan, and I think Android is potential y(once 3.0 comes out anyway) a better tablet OS in terms of feature and flexibility, but my issue really boils down to Androids limited user protections (security, etc), limited multitouch support in the OS (some apps do OK, but not the UI in general), poor overall app visual quality (including apps that cost twice what iOS aps do for the same ap, often from the same developer), and limited overall app selection for tablet oriented functions (there's no office equivalent on android), yet Microsoft is making an iOS version of office....).
The big loser in all this is not the PC OEMs but Microsoft. The OEMs can still grow a pair and start building ARM based android tablets. Microsoft has no such option. They long ago burnt their cross platform bridges to non x86 architectures to keep their marketing suits happy and now they are going to pay the price.
I don't know how we ended up with a "net book or death" demographic, other then the apparent inability of a noisy subsection of geekdom to manage more than one kind of technology at a time, but Jesus people, can you either get over it or go and get your autism properly diagnosed.
The things that most people use net books for are easily done by a tablet, and the UX on a tablet is considerably better than a lappy for the average user. Let's be honest, the things YOU do on your net book, which are porn, browsing, email and whining into the internets could also easily be done on a tablet.
Oh, you'll whine on about how you'd just die without 12 USB ports and a command line, but we don't believe you. Stop it.
I deal with tech support and continue to see people need that keyboard net books have that tablets do not. People need that ultra portable net access that lets office work get done on the fly without the heft and bulk of typical laptops getting in the way. Once the initial "oh shiny" effect of a new product being introduced has passed I think tablets and netbooks will continue to both come along nicely. In the end tablets seem suited for entertainment and netbooks better suited for productivity work. Both those needs are not going away. I think both are hear for the foreseeable future.
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