Don't hold your breath for a Sony netbook: "We're not in for the moment."
Nicolas Barendson, a senior executive at Sony U.K., says that laptops with 7-10" screens don't meet consumer needs and that the netbook market will "evolve" into a different form factor.
"The netbook market's booming [but] we're not in for the moment. We analyzing what's going on," he told ZDNet. "We think that the proposition in the market today is not the future of netbook ... the form factor is not properly designed for the consumer's needs ... So there's a lot of quantity sold, people are disappointed by them, and it's not small enough to be pocketable and not big enough to be a PC."
The company, he says, will have a "different proposition" to the range of nearly-identical netbooks currently on other.
Sony and Apple are the big holdouts in the rush to make netbooks, which have come to dominate sales charts in a matter of months. Apple is in idea-gestation mode, but Sony's expected to show its hand next month at CES, with a device it says will change the way you think about laptops.
Barendson's remarks are ominous, but interesting.
If Sony's response to netbooks is going to be yet another $1,000+ ultra-mobile PC, God help it.
That's the obvious point to make, though. Its marketing line suggests it's going to take a stab at something unusual: the iPhone's big brother, perhaps? A touchscreen tablet pc-PSP-Walkman in a clamshell format?
Source [Zdnet]
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I am just commenting here to quote Joel from his awesome April 10th, 2008 post, the one that made me subscribe to BBG:
'A few months ago, a Sony executive, asked what he thought of the success of the Asus Eee bargain sub-notebook, leaned back in his chair, sucked on his cigar and smugly denounced the pursuit of cute, tiny, low-cost laptops as "a race to the bottom." Then, turning dangerous, he leapt like a panther across the desk, tackled his inquisitor and plunged the smoldering ember of his cigar through the vitreous of his interviewer's eye.'
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/04/10/dell-joins-asus-hp-i-1.html
@Dean: Thank you. I had forgotten about that post! That was me ripping off Brownlee like crazy!
Oh, you know what? I bet that *was* Brownlee! That would be why I didn't remember it. He was ghostwriting for a couple of weeks while he warmed up.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Sony launched another "cheap" $1000+ UMPC, haha.
It's true that the netbook form factor isn't perfect, although very marketable - I can't wait to see what Apple/Sony come up with.
I don't have a lot of techie friends but does this statement ring true at all?
"the form factor is not properly designed for the consumer's needs ... So there's a lot of quantity sold, people are disappointed by them"
I've seen very few complaints online about netbook purchases. Most people seem very happy with them, beyond obvious quibbles such as keyboard design.
When a CEO of any firm says something along the lines of "don't meet consumer needs" to products that just about blew everyone's expectations - you better sell any shares you happen to have in it.
(Not to mention that firms nowadays are completely and utterly detached from the needs of anyone and just look at the demand of the market. Two barely connected concepts, when you start to scratch the surface.)
Probability of Sony blithely releasing expensive, keyboard-less MID: high
Given the FCC filing, my money is with Rob, on Sony relaunching the C1 Picturebook line (albeit probably under another name). The Picturebooks were lovely but pricey for what they were; using the Atom and commodity hardware Sony could reintroduce them with better battery life, performance, and connectivity, and still make a stonking profit by selling them at a price above the Netbook market but below the premium ultralight notebook market (such as their TZ series).
Oh man, you sound just like Charlie Stross when you talk like that.