bhavishya_KANJHAN

In October 2007 Asus started it all with the release of its Eee PC series, the first of which had a tiny 7″ screen running a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor. Since then the netbook market has been on fire with a range of manufacturers announcing and releasing devices throughout the year. Netbooks with varying processors, screen sizes, keyboard layouts and prices have filled up both real and virtual shelfs.

However the once distinct line between notebooks and netbooks which stood at 1.6GHz, 10.2″ screen size is now being blurred out. 2008 was undoubtedly a great year for notebooks and we saw their adoption, that too at a extremely quick pace, The gone Christmas season was the best for Amazon but with 17 of the top 25 laptops being netbooks, trends could be worrying. With 2008 being the year of the economic downturn people were most likely looking for cheaper alternative.

I wrote a post a while ago about Netbooks not being able to replace notebooks and I still stand by what the situation was at that given time. Dell and Samsung have both announced Netbooks at 12″ screen size and MSI takes it up a notch at 13.4″. NVidia’s ION platform enables laptops with the Intel Atom processer to play HD at 1080p. At these sizes these machines become notebooks which as less-powered, but still very capable of performing everyday tasks required by most consumers as well as professionals. At this point netbooks start to creep into notebook territory. It’s no wonder Intel is nervous about it, and despite it being the lead provider for netbook processors, has criticised netbooks in the past with Intel’s VP Stu Pann saying netbooks are not an all day machine. Michael Arrington seems to think this is because “every Netbook sold is one less Dual Core that Intel can sell at a higher price and higher margin” and he may just be right.

What does this whole situation mean for netbooks as they have been known pre-2009, i.e., complimentary machines to larger, more powerful ones? What, if any, will be the distinction between netbooks and notebooks? Or are we coming back to a point where notebooks and netbooks come together again under one heading again?

I was watching the live stream of the last TWiT which featured Robert Scoble, John Dvorak and Dwight Silverman as guests along with host Leo Laporte. They were discussing mobile phones and platforms and Scoble said he didn’t see Android being #1 in the future.

I think he’s wrong. A huge reason for the iPhone’s success has been it’s application platform development. The applications available on the App Store have resulted in a multi fold increase in the utility of the device, both for productivity as well as entertainment. A pre 2.0 iPhone looks practically naked now. But this is just one device.

Google’s Android platform is available to , and will be used on many devices. The G1 is only the beginning. With Samsung, Lenovo, Sprint and AT&T poised to bring Android devices in this and next year, Android’s reach is going to spready increasingly. Soon enough a user won’t be stuck with one form factor. Devices with QWERTY keyboards, Numeric keyboards, No Keyboards, Large Screens, Small screens, slide devices, flip devices etc will be available in Android flavour. All this choice will result in increased adoption among users.

This increased adoption of Android will make development for Android increasingly lucrative as developers will now have access to a much much wider consumer base which in turn will result in an increase in the number of applications and attract even more consumers. It’s a cycle right there.

Android’s greatest strength lies in the openness of the platform. Wonderful things will be done with it in the future. One needs to remember the first device was launched only 3 months ago and Android’s is still in the infancy stage. 2010 is going to be a huge year for Android. You can quote me on that.