Intel's sales chief talks Netbooks vs. notebooks

Intel marketing chief Sean Maloney

(Credit: Intel)

Unleashing innovation is key no matter what laptop category you're talking about--whether Netbooks or low-cost notebooks, said Intel's sales chief, ahead of this week's Computex trade show in Taipei.

I spoke briefly with Intel's marketing chief Sean Maloney--who is at Computex this week--on Monday night and asked him about how the wave of low-cost, thin notebooks based on his company's "ULV" (ultra-low-voltage) chips may affect Netbook sales.

New, aesthetically appealing, inexpensive notebooks, such as the $699 Acer Aspire Timeline, could make Netbooks less attractive, which pin a lot of their popularity on bargain-basement pricing.

Maloney said Intel is not going to fret over sacrificing one category of laptops because it needs to protect another.

"It's a loser mentality to not develop one segment because you're worried about the other," he said. "I think we have several years ahead of us where we can innovate the heck out of any of these categories without getting defensive about the other one. You just need to unleash innovation in all of the segments and see what happens."

And what about the new 3G-capable Netbooks--which Qualcomm had dubbed "smartbooks"--appearing at Computex from Asus and upstarts like Mobinnnova which are tied to the ARM processor and sold through telecommunications providers? "The more the merrier. The more innovation there will be. It's good for the industry to have competition," Maloney said.

New ULV notebook wave: Acer Aspire Timeline has a number of the same specifications and attributes of the upscale Dell Adamo but is priced more than $1,000 below the Adamo

(Credit: Acer)

Maloney continued. "We've shipped very large numbers of Netbooks through service providers in the last year and a half. Most of the service providers around the world have been shipping Netbooks for some time," he said. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, is now selling an Intel Atom-based Netbook at Verizon stores in the U.S. with 3G built in.

And, how important is the rollout of the new ULV chips? "This is a big announcement and it's kind of on par with the original announcements we made with the original Centrino," Maloney said.

"Fashion is going to play an ever-bigger role (in notebooks). It's like the cell phone industry four or five years ago. An incredible number of designs are coming out in the thin form factor."

"Very light, very thin, and incredibly long battery life," he said of the ULV laptops. Sounds a lot like the evolution of the Netbook--except it isn't called a Netbook. But, as Maloney said, may the best product category win.

[forever4now]

I think the term "smartbook" should be reserved for "netbooks" (x86 or ARM) that include all of the typical smartphone hardware (3G, GPS, accelerometer, compass, etc.). This hardware enables "smartphone" functionality like location-based services, cell phone calls, SMS, automatic screen rotation, etc.

People wanting a notebook-like computer would get a "netbook" running a desktop OS (Windows,Ubuntu,...). People wanting a smartphone-like computer, would get a "smartbook" running a smartphone OS (Android,Symbian,WinMo,...).

[ikramerica--2008]

Well, you can already get a full fledged "last years model" laptop from Dell or HP for the price of a netbook. So it's not just about price. It's about portability. That said, i think you can see from Dell dropping the mini9, that customers didn't like the tiny screen or the tiny storage space. "Why can't I do XYZ with this?" So they put the mini9 guts into their 10 inch chassis, with normal SATA drives (120GB is standard).

I am sure a lot of netbook customers didn't exactly know what they were buying. They thought it was a "little laptop" but found it it had less usable storage space (once the OS is installed) than an iPhone.

[cosuna]

I agree with @ikramerica, although every time I hear Intel talk about Netbooks, it seems that they don't want this category which was "invented" behind their backs. They don't want it 'cause they know the Atom isn't supposed to run anything higher that Windows XP Embedded or Linux, so that kicks both them and Microsoft in the but.

They are promoting the new ULVs (based on their champion product, the Core 2 Duo) as an alternative, cause they know Microsoft's gonna be happy if everybody forgets the netbooks existed and start buying into the ULV mombo-jombo.

This time, both are wrong. People are buying netbooks 'cause they "simply work" they aren't overbloated and overequiped like today's laptops with FireWire, S-Video, HDMI, DVD double layer, LED screens, etc. In the end, this add cost and in the end people don't see the difference when the S-Video output is always vacant, they don't burn a lot of double layer DVDs and never use the FireWire.

So yes @ikramerica, you can buy yesterdays technology for today's price, but you'll get Vista and forget about all the benefits.

[ikramerica--2008]

I really don't think you agree. My point was that a netbook is slower and less powerful than a closeout model from the HP or Dell website. And the reason netbook sales have plateaued already and that Dell dropped it's 9" is because many customers are responding to the netbooks they bought in a less than enthusiastic way. "Why can't it do this?" "I can't even fit my music on here. Now I want to have pictures on it, too." "I can't watch a DVD nor is there room to store more than 1 or 2 movies."

The main reason the netbook is limited in power is not price but because MS says it has to be. Intel can't make their chip faster because MS is (illegally?) defining a market limitation. People get on Apple's case about control, but the way MS has dictated what is allowed to be considered a NetBook just so you can sell it with XP (1.6G single core or slower processor, 1GB or less storage) is really what is keeping this computers from being what people want them to be.

So as long as that limitation is there, some will be disappointed with the NetBook and think twice about another in the future. Maybe MS will remove this limitation with Windows 7, but I doubt it. If they are going to offer an extra cheap OEM version of Windows 7 for netbooks, it's going to come with strings attached.

[tipoo_]

" "The more the merrier. The more innovation there will be. It's good for the industry to have competition," Maloney said. "

Intel...Talking about competition being good?


My head asplode.