Netbook Evangelist | The blog with information for netbooks & tablets

Acer overtook Dell as the world’s second-largest computer vendor during the third quarter, as the PC market showed signs of coming back to life, IDC said on Wednesday.

Global PC shipments grew 2.3 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, to 78.1 million units. It was the first quarter this year in which PC shipments have grown, IDC said.

Acer’s shipments grew by a whopping 25.6 percent to reach 10.96 million units, outpacing Dell, whose shipments declined 8.4 percent to 9.95 million units. Acer “outperformed the market in virtually all regions,” IDC said.

Acer benefited from strong shipments during the back-to-school season, as prices for laptops fell and netbook shipments gained momentum, said Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.

Dell has not embraced low-cost netbooks as enthusiastically as Acer, Chou said. Acer benefitted more from the competitive pricing environment for laptops and netbooks.

Acer ended the quarter with 14 percent of the market, compared to Dell’s 12.7 percent. Both companies trailed Hewlett-Packard, which retained its spot as the world’s top PC vendor. HP held 20.2 percent of the market after shipping 15.79 million PCs, a year-over-year growth rate of 9.3 percent.

HP is stronger in retail sales than Dell, which helped it generate stronger back-to-school sales.

Dell is stronger in sales to businesses, and it could rebound during a corporate PC refresh cycle that could happen in 2010, Chou said. Until then, Dell may struggle to keep up with competitors in unit shipments. The company saw solid growth in emerging markets, IDC noted, which was a positive sign.

Ever since Dell lost its market share lead, founder and CEO Michael Dell has insisted he is more concerned with profits. “If we wanted [market share], we’d go and sell a whole bunch of netbooks,” he said in a recent earnings call. Netbooks carry lower profit margins than full-fledged PCs.

Lenovo recorded strong growth of 18.2 percent, giving it the fourth-place spot with PC shipments of 6.99 million. Toshiba was fifth, with shipments growing 6.9 percent to 4.04 million.

“The continued strength of both the U.S. and worldwide PC business in the face of difficult economic environments underscores the value that both consumer and corporate buyers place on PCs,” Bob O’Donnell, vice president for clients and displays at IDC, said in a statement.

PC shipments in the U.S. grew by 2.5 percent during the third quarter, while shipments in Asia-Pacific “grew nicely,” IDC said. Shipments in Japan declined by a double-digit percentage as consumer and corporate spending remained weak. Shipments also declined in EMEA, IDC said.

Nokia’s just confirmed that its first foray into netbooks, the Nokia Booklet 3G, will be available first in Germany in just under two weeks’ time.

22nd October is the date and although there’s no UK announcement, we can get an idea of how much it might cost us. Germans will be asked to cough up €249 (£231,$367) to take home a 3G – plus €20/month (£18.50,$30) on contract. That totals a whopping £675 ($1,078) over the lifetime of the two-year deal.

Expensive it may be, but the built-in 3G, Assisted-GPS chip, HD screen, HDMI port and stonking 12-hour battery life – together with its MacBook-esque carved aluminium chassis – go some way to justifying the price tag.

At the recent Linuxcon Conference in Portland, Oregon, there were hints of new Moblin-powered hardware being announced at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum. Normally, this would be moderately interesting news, but some of the ambitious comments made by Linux luminaries at Linuxcon merit further examination. People from the Linux Foundation, Intel, and IBM spoke at the conference, and it’s evident that they see the netbook market as the epicenter of the movement to raise Linux’s profile in the consumer space, and whittle away marketshare from Windows. Update: Intel has also announced Moblin 2.1 for phones.

There are a couple of interesting quotes in the PC World coverage of the conference:

“We need to stop pretending that it will be a drop-in replacement [for Windows] and make it something better,” said Bob Sutor, vice president for open source and Linux in IBM’s software group.

Linux failed to retain its early lead in netbooks because it was trying to emulate Windows. “We were trying to win at their game. We in the Linux community are trying to be successful by mimicking what someone else is doing successfully. To me, that is a losing strategy,” he said.

Linux got an early lead in the netbook market because of its favorable economics. The profit margins were so thin that the manufacturers were drawn to Linux because of its lack of licensing fees. But Linux-based netbooks lost momentum early on due to two factors: Microsoft’s extremely aggressive price-cutting of Windows XP OEM licenses from the bargain bin, and, perhaps more importantly, the netbook vendors’ lackadaisical attitude about software development. To a large extent, after putting a fair amount of creativity into designing small and cheap laptops, these vendors failed to put a complementary effort into adapting the available Linux distributions to the hardware and smaller format. More importantly, they failed to support netbook users with a halo of web-based services that would have made using, troubleshooting, customizing and upgrading their new Linux netbooks fun and easy.

So when typical computer users bough these new mini-laptops, they found themselves not only in an unfamiliar environment, but unable to use these machines the way they would normally use them – that is, by installing Windows software on them. In comes Microsoft with cheap XP licenses, and the rest is history.

As much as we can all scoff at Apple’s claims that the iPhone is their answer to the netbook, there’s a lesson to be learned there. New iPhone users are faced with a radically unfamiliar computing environment, user interface, form factor, and software ecosystem, even more so than a Linux netbook buyer. So obviously the iPhone completely failed in the marketplace. Oh yeah, it didn’t. And not only because of the reality-distortion field. The iPhone overcame the unfamiliarity hurtle because its radical user interface was well-suited to its form factor, and because Apple built a scaffolding around the iPhone experience that (eventually) made routine personalization of the device easy.

The netbook’s strength and weakness is that it is a rather familiar form factor, so people expect it to act like a laptop PC. I believe that people will always be more accepting of alternative operating systems when they come in unfamiliar packages, such as a mobile device, DVR, NAS box, or alarm clock. But failing to target a very popular mini-laptop market just because there’s a built-in expectation of Windows-like functionality would be a pretty timid strategy, and it doesn’t look like Intel, IBM, and the various Linux distros are ready to throw in the towel.

When I first learned that Intel was putting money behind Moblin, I’ll admit I wasn’t enthusiastic. Intel is one level abstracted from the OS market, since they don’t make devices themselves, and I doubted that such a big company would be able to sustain interest in such a seemingly non-core project. But I’m coming around, because I now see that it’s really in Intel’s best interests. Intel had an easy time of it all through the eighties and nineties, because every computer user in the world was perpetually unsatisfied with the speed of their computer. But early in this decade, Moore’s Law turned around and bit Intel on the ass, when suddenly everybody’s three-year-old computer was still faster than they would ever need for their routine computing tasks. Intel has spent the past decade desperately trying to think of things for regular people to do with computers that would require vastly faster processors (video editing? virtual reality? weather simulations?) but have so far come up short. And where the real action is these days, in mobile and novel computing devices, Intel is working at a disadvantage, since it has robust competition in the low-power space, such as Freescale and ARM. But for devices that span the gap between low-power mobile devices and high-power PCs, Intel dominates with the Atom, and if they can figure out how to get mid-power computing devices to catch on big-time, then they’ll have a strong opportunity in that market.

As the presenters at Linuxcon pointed out, Microsoft is about to give the Linux netbook market a big gift: for strategic reasons, Microsoft can’t continue to sell Windows XP on any device. Everything has to move to Windows 7. But there’s no way that OEMs will be gettgng Windows 7 licenses for next to nothing like they were for Windows XP.

“What I hear when I talk to netbook vendors is Microsoft does not want to repeat the extremely aggressive pricing with XP Home. They want to significantly increase the price for Windows 7 netbooks,” said Dirk Hohndel, chief technology officer of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center.

So here’s Linux’s big second chance. Microsoft will likely let them lead on price again, and with Intel beind Moblin, there’s a good chance that the next generation of Linux netbooks will have not only a robust underpinning, but a pleasant and different user experience. Many different players (including Intel and Novell) are already discussing setting up “App Store” type sites for Moblin devices that are likely to appeal to a broad spectrum of users. Adding to this perfect storm is the rise of cloud computing and the usefulness of apps like Google Apps, which chips away at Microsoft’s desktop stranglehold.

Microsoft, of course, will play to its strengths, and the fact that Windows 7 is a very good desktop operating system and should run quite ably on varous kinds of lighter-weight devices and enable users to tap into the vast library of familiar apps will ensure that it’s a major player in this market, even if it will be a struggle for them to balance profit margin and marketshare in this space.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation says that within a year, “no one will buy hardware or software” and that the market will look a lot like the mobile phone market, with wireless carriers giving devices away for free with service contracts. “Microsoft’s economics don’t fit into that at all,” he said. I’m not sure I want to live in that world, but if that world is coming, then he’s probably right.

VIA has recently released its NetNote Turnkey Systems, which are netbook PCs ranging in size from 10.2 to 12.1 inches. Unlike mostnetbooks, however, the NetNotes are said to be capable of flawless 1080p HD video playback thanks to hardware video decoding in the VX855 graphics chipset. The actual CPUs can come from VIA’s C7-M ULV or Nano families. The C7-Ms are the simpler processors and can be had with clock speeds that range from 1GHz to 1.6GHz. They consume between 3.5W and 8W of power.

The 64-bit VIA Nanos are based on a smaller and more advanced 65nm architecture, have an 800MHz front side bus and carry 1MB of L2 cache. Clock speeds also range higher, from 1 to 1.8GHz. The VX855 media processor found in the NetNotes can accelerate H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and VC-1 HD video formats.

Unique features in the NetNotes include an integrated MP3 player that doesn’t require the regular OS to boot, an extendable antenna that can receive digital satellite and terrestrial transmitters and an FM transmitter that can send audio output to nearby FM radio tuners.

Despite the HD playback capabilities, the 10.2-inch LED screen has a 1024×600 resolution, while the 12.1-inch screen has a 1366×768 resolution. RAM in either is fixed at 2GB, Windows XP is preloaded onto the 160GB or 320GB hard drives, and there is the option of a 1.8-inch solid state drive of unstated capacity. Windows Vista and various Linux distributions are an option on the systems. Wi-Fi, a 0.3-megapixel camera and two USB ports are standard fare, while EVDO-based 3G is an option for primarily US-bound netbooks. A three-cell battery is standard, while a six-cell is optional.

The reference systems can be rebranded and marketed by other manufacturers, though VIA has not revealed raw pricing or ship dates.

Today, Acer quietly unleashed a netbook dubbed Ferrari One. Buffing AMD’s Congo platform, the netbook strives to push the limits of the netbook market.

It’s said that it will sport AMD’s Athlon X2 L310 processor, coming in at 1.2GHz with 1MB L2 cache. Built on the M780G chipset, meaning an ATI Radeon 3200 IGP with HD capability. It wouldn’t be a netbook without a super small screen, the Ferrari one has an 11.6” screen as a resolution of 1366×76, not quite HD. You’ll also get 2GB of memory, a 250GB HDD, a memory card reader, 5,600mAh six-cell battery, Bluetooth, and Wireless N. At $728 (499 Euros), your paying a good premium for the sporty, stylish look.

Other non-standard features you’ll get, not commonly on most, is Dolby Home Theater, external video card support, multi-touch mouse pad, and the world famous Farrari horse. This ultra beefy netbook is expected to ship with either Windows 7 Starter, or Home Premium (Hence the multi-touch). It’s also speculated that it will only ship with a 64-bit version of Windows.

Asus is hoping to do for the e-reader market what it did for PCs when it introduced the first netbook. Asus, it’s reported, will release one, if not two, e-reader in 2009, a “premium” version of which will feature two screens with a booklike spine.

Asus is planning to enter the e-reader market later this year with at least one, if not two, device, the Times of London is reporting.

The company that invented the netbook is innovating again, as the design ideas it shared with the Times would surely shake up the market. Unlike the single, flat screens of current e-readers—such as the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and Plastic Logic Reader—the Asus version would feature two screen on a hinged spine, more exactly mimicking the look and feel of a book.

Additionally, the Asus e-reader would feature full color, instead of the monocolor screens its competitors use, for a realistic ink-on-paper look. It would also feature touch-screens and offer online connectivity. Consequently, readers would have the option of reading on one page and pulling up a Web page—with supplemental materials, for example—on the other, making it a natural educational tool.

Another option, reports the Times, is for the second screen to act as an on-screen keyboard, enabling the e-reader to be used like a laptop. A Webcam, speakers and a microphone for Skype also will be included.

“Our ethos is innovation—as our brand is less well-known, we have to run faster than the competition to develop new types of products,” a spokesman for Asus told the Times.

“Any such product—including an e-reader—has to have the right combination of functionality and price. No one is going to buy one for £1,000.”

Asus is said to be working on “budget” and “premium” versions. The premium is likely the double-screen version described above. The budget model, dubbed the Eee Reader, after the company’s Eee PC netbook line, is expected to be more traditional and compete at a considerably lower price point. The Times reports that Asus will likely try for a price of 100 British pounds, or approximately $164.

In a July 29 report, Forrester Research found that the e-reader market is growing, “albeit from a very small base,” according to report author Sarah Rotman. She concluded that the market will grow once prices fall.

“While some will jump on board when prices hit $199 in 2010, others will hold out for a $99 device in 2012 or a $99 E Ink screen accessory for PCs and smartphones that could (and should) come out sooner,” she wrote.

In a Sept. 1 report, Forrester reiterated the same, forecasting that interest will rise as prices drop. The same author predicted that e-readers won’t reach the purchase numbers of MP3 players—which in 2009, 61 percent of the U.S. online population owns—but that digital cameras, which took 10 years to reach 50 million U.S. consumers, are a more likely model.

If Asus can do for the e-reader market what it did for PCs, it’ll be back to the drawing board for the researchers.

HELSINKI – The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it would start to make laptops, entering a fiercely competitive, but fast-growing market.

Nokia has seen its profit margins drop over the last quarters as handset demand has slumped, and analysts have worried that entering the PC industry, where margins are traditionally razor-thin, could hurt Nokia’s profits further.

“We are fully aware what has the margin level been in the PC world. We have gone into this with our eyes wide open,” Kai Oistamo, the head of Nokia’s key phone unit, told Reuters.

Its first netbook, the Nokia Booklet 3G, will use Microsoft’s Windows software and Intel’s Atom processor — offering up to 12 hours of battery life, and weighing 1.25 kilograms. Netbooks are low-cost laptops optimized for surfing the Internet and performing other basic applications. Pioneered by Asustek in 2007, other brands such as HP and Dell have also pushed out their own lines since then.

Research firm IDC expects netbook shipments this year to grow more than 127 percent from 2008 to over 26 million units, outperforming the overall PC market that is expected to remain flat and a phone market which is shrinking some 10 per cent.

“Nokia will be hoping that its brand and knowledge of cellular channels will play to its strengths as it addresses this crowded, cut-throat segment,” said Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight.

“At present we see Nokia’s foray into the netbook market as a niche exercise in the context of its broader business.”

Nokia said it would unveil detailed specifications, market availability and pricing of the device on Sept 2.

A source close to Nokia said the new netbook would use the upcoming Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft says a stripped-down version of Windows 7 will be introduced to netbooks the same time as its general release on October 22.

Lest you think that Netbooks are dead, Sharp is out with the PC-Z1, released under the “NetWalker” brand in Japan.

Running an Ubuntu Linux derivative, several sites have compared the PC-Z1 to the fabled Sharp Zaurus.

Ubuntu is a logical choice for Netbooks and other low-cost consumer devices. Besides being highly customizable, the open-source aspect really helps. Companies can tweak the operating system to meet their needs without having to be burdened with licensing fees. But having owned an Asus Eee PC for more than a year, I can safely opine that Netbooks are not all they are cracked up to be. Between the challenging keyboard and questionable battery life, their utility varies between models and user styles.

Gizmodo doesn’t think that this is a Netbook, but at this point, the whole category is so confusing, I can’t figure what you’re supposed to call it. (An extra batch of pictures of the PC-Z1 is available at Akihabara News.)

Odds are, you are better off with a smartphone, unless you really love this form factor or have very tiny hands for the very tiny keyboard. I find it hard to imagine people lugging these around as their main machine. Nonetheless, Sharp has raised the bar with better boot time and a claimed a 10-hour battery life. According to its release Thursday:

The PC-Z1 features a quick-launch function (approx. 3 seconds) similar to mobile phones, enabling users to conveniently check e-mail while on the road. Also, a long battery running time (approximately 10 hours) allows users to fully enjoy net services, such as videos or blogs.

The high-resolution, 5-inch touch-screen LCD enables intuitive touch operation while the full keyboard provides for comfortable text input. Additionally, in business settings, users can create documents, spreadsheets, presentation materials, etc., and edit them stress-free.

Verizon Wireless is again offering a second BlackBerry with each one purchased, but this time the deal includes any other device — of equal or lesser value — that Verizon sells.

That means new subscribers, or those signing new two-year contracts, can get a free netbook with a BlackBerry Tour smartphone. The Tour costs US$199.99 after Verizon’s rebate, and the least-expensive netbook Verizon sells is the HP Mini 1151 NR, also priced at $199.99. Those customers could also get any USB, PC Card or ExpressCard modem the carrier offers.

The offer also covers the Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, a $199.99 battery-powered 3G modem that includes a Wi-Fi access point that can be used with any five Wi-Fi devices. To get any of these devices free with the BlackBerry, the customer would have to sign up for a two-year contract for both devices. Monthly data plans start at $39.99 with a 250MB cap and $59.99 with a 5GB cap.

Research In Motion and Verizon both have been working hard to grab attention and sales from the still-popular Apple iPhone, which in the U.S. is offered only on Verizon rival AT&T’s network. A BlackBerry buy-one-get-one offer that Verizon ran earlier this year was widely credited with helping the BlackBerry Curve beat the iPhone in unit sales in the first quarter. The BlackBerry Storm, RIM’s first touch-screen product, also debuted to hot sales in that quarter.

With the latest promotion, Verizon wanted to make sure its customers were able to get the second device they needed, instead of limiting them to getting another BlackBerry. Verizon sells all other BlackBerry models for less than the Tour, ranging from the Storm at $99.99 to the BlackBerry 8703e for $29.99, each with two-year contracts.

The Tour, which debuted last month, can work on both the EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) network technology used by Verizon and the GSM/HSPA (Global System for Mobile Communications/High-Speed Packet Access) system used by most carriers outside the U.S. It is available in models with or without a 3.2-megapixel camera, meeting the security requirements of some businesses and government agencies. Both models cost $199.99 at Verizon.