Netbook vendors shipped 30.2 million units worldwide during 2009, as worldwide units increased 79% annually, according to Strategy Analytics. The company called it "an important year for netbooks" and said North America and Western Europe were the biggest netbook markets.
Acer
, Asus, HP and Dell were listed as the largest vendors.
It pointed out that the launch of a version of Windows 7 for netbooks "helped vendors reinvigorate their portfolios."
Strategy Analytics director Peter King said 2010 will be a growth year, too, as chipset makers like Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia and others "continue to push new processors that promise to do more while taking up less space and consuming less power."
It’ll be interesting to see how netbooks fare against tablet PCs like Apple’s new iPad. Netbooks are less expensive, but both offer small size and built-in Internet access. IPads and other tablets seem more positioned as entertainment devices, mainly for use in the home and while travelling. Apple emphasized their use as devices for playing music, movies and TV shows and reading books and publications.
Netbooks appear to be better suited than tablets for computing applications such as word processing and spreadsheets. |
