Sony is afraid
CNet has a news story this morning about a Sony admitting they’re scared of the the potential for the subnotebook market to take off with great success. Senior VP of Sony’s IT Product Division, Mike Abary, admits that low-priced laptops could be “trouble” for sales of higher-priced, larger laptops.
Being an owner now of a subnotebook myself, they should have fear. So should Apple, Dell, Lenovo, and any other manufacturer of notebooks that command prices above $1000 (in some cases well above $3000, and not worth it). Take a look at our economy lately…it’s not doing all that well. The mortgage industry is in bad shape, housing prices are dropping, gas is extremely high priced lately. People are going to be moving towards spending less on electronics. No one wants to spend $3000 for a laptop that is highly portable, just to use it for daily tasks like email, web browsing, documents, and an occasional Skype call.
At the price point this new breed of ultra-mobile PC’s or subnotebooks are starting out at…it’s definitely a lot less of a risk to spend $299 on an Asus Eee which will get you the basics of every-day computing. Combine that with the ultra mobility of the Asus Eee / Cloudbook, and I think the days of big sales in huge SUV-sized laptops are numbered.
Posted in News, Technology | 
February 29th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Slashot is reporting on this too.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:59 am
[...] his CloudBook adventure. He notes, among other things, the hard drive is too slow and also that Sony should be very afraid of cheap subnotebooks. He’s also tried several games, so go to the home page and read through [...]