*Netbooks. These were dirt-cheap devices originally built for little kids.
I wonder how long before people start making netbooks out of straw and styrofoam and selling them from street kiosks.
We're getting close to a new Sino-Global model for the PC industry here.
"Look, I'm poor, but there's a billion of me. So knock it off with the geek overachiever gloss, and sell me something I can use to run my noodle stand."
People hate the Linux in netbooks – sincerely, they hate it, they don't wanna learn it because they don't want to become freeware geeks – but it's so much cheaper, I have to wonder. Otherwise we're heading for a cellphone model where the hardware comes free while the services are cellular walled gardens.
Man, personal computers were the flagship industry of the
Washington Consensus. You really have to wonder what comes next.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/01/19/idc_emea_sales/
Europe PC sales sagged in 2008
Only floating on a raft of netbooks
By John Oates • Get more from this author
Posted in PC Builder, 19th January 2009 15:10 GMT
PC sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew just 1.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the economic crisis began to bite.
Stefania Lorenz, director at IDC, said: "The worldwide financial and credit crisis has hit the largest markets in Central and Eastern Europe [CEE], causing the PC market to contract, by 23.8 per cent, for the first time ever... Middle East and Africa [MEA] remained just afloat, reporting 0.1 per cent growth year on year thanks to the notebook market."
Western Europe did better - growing 11.9 per cent thanks to demand for portables and netbooks which pushed consumer growth to 56 per cent. Desktop sales fell thanks to slower business renewals and losing share to portable machines.
(...) Acer was up 21.9 per cent (...) Asus leapt 68.7 per cent. (...) Toshiba was up 26.7 per cent.
The analysts expect 2009 to be a tough year, although it sees some hope for vendors from telcos which continue to offer subsidised netbooks.
(((Another significant thing here for John Robb fans: Taiwan is a "pariah state."
They're not even an officially recognized country, yet their model for computing machinery is taking the world by storm.
(((Why on earth would this little outlaw nation, a kind of unsinkable aircraft-carrier for the Chinese Diaspora, want to play by the old rules?
Especially now that they undercut the PC biz by dropping prices by two-thirds?
The elaborate, tottering IP and patent structure for digital hardware and software....
after the abject financial collapse, this even more baroque economic regime looks like some crowd of aging white guys in lace cuffs, periwigs and high heels.)))
(((More – top-end chips vaporized by meltdown. "Let them eat brioche.")))
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/01/16/lynnfield_postponed/
