ApoTheTech

ASUS recently disclosed their inventory data a couple of days back and said that the ASUS is unlikely to profitable in quarter 1, 2009.  Infact, he said that the company is doing everything to clear the inventory. But, what caught our eye was the fact that ASUS EEE PCs are not selling at the rate the company wanted it to.

With the stiff competition from ACER, HP, Samsung and DELL, such a result was quite expected. On the other hand, netbooks are also getting a lot pricier than before, which would mean less buyers. Not everyone is going to spend $550 on a netbook like ASUS S101.

[digitimes]

An year ago, it was quite easy to differentiate a netbook from a notebook. But now, the differences between a netbook and notebook are getting blurred every day. We are already able to observe changes that occured in the netbook field in the past year. People yearned for bigger devices with bigger displays and more horsepower, which forced the Netbook manufactures to give people what they want.

Now, we hear announcements every day of some XYZ company coming out with netbooks with built-in DVD drives and bigger displays. One of the most important points that makes a netbooks easily differentiable from the notebook is the size of it. Companies like DELL and ASUS have already rolled out (or going to roll out) devices that are of size of notebooks.

So, the question arises if the Netbooks die in the future. Well, if the manufactures continue to come out with bigger and heavier netbooks, it would ultimately kill the whole point of netbooks, which is: portability. A fully featured netbook, which has 12-inch+ screen and has DVD drive weighing around 2kg is no different from any laptop (notebook) in the market.

Conclusion: The whole netbook concept would become a gimmick and Netbooks would merge with the notebooks in near future.