The Emerging Netbook Market

I’ve put together a short brief to bring anyone out of the loop into the loop in regards to netbook computing. A static link to this article can be found in the articles section.

What is a “Netbook”?

The term “netbook” refers to a low-cost, small-sized, energy-efficient laptop computer. The term has only begun to see common usage in the past six months. Netbooks are a very new development in computing. Spurred by One Laptop per Child Inc.’s “XO” netbook, leading manufacturers such as Dell, Asus and Intel have now developed their own netbooks. The introduction of Asus’ EEEPC and Dells Mini 9 have effectively established a competitive market for these devices.

“IDC, a market research firm, is predicting that the category could grow from fewer than 500,000 in 2007 to nine million in 2012 as the market for second computers expands in developed economies.
Intel is projecting that by 2011, the market for the netbooks will be 40 million units a year…”
The New York Times, Matt Richtel, July 21, 2008.

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Massive Netbook order for Venezuela

Sam Churchill from dailywireless.org writes:

“The government of Venezuela has announced plans to order more than one million Classmate PC laptops from Portugal as part of a broad economic agreement between the two countries. The government of Venezuela aims to boost technical literacy by distributing the computers to schools. The Classmate PC units that will be distributed to schools in Venezuela and Portugal will ship preinstalled with a custom flavor of the Linux operating system.”(Source)

Can you say “massive”?! Now we will study the Venezuelan government’s method for distribution and integration. Their application is going to reveal important information for anyone else involved in the netbook industry wanting to do the same.

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