Dell has ended their Netbook line.
That leaves Google's Chromebooks, which aren't exactly exciting.
I wasn't just a little wrong about Netbooks, I was incredibly, unbelievably, totally wrong. Again.
I mean, this is friggin' ridiculous.
What happened?
I suppose it was the pocket computer. People with iPhones and the Android equivalent are already paying for most of what a Netbook can do. It doesn't make sense to pay for an extra monthly data plan, and a Netbook without net access is kind of a bust.
That leaves Windows notebooks, which are cheap but crummy. And MacBook Airs, which are not cheap but very amazing.
There's still the grade school and perhaps junior high school marketplace, but the iPad and Android equivalents are squeezing there too.
The Netbook looks like an evolutionary dead end. Maybe we'd have taken that road, but the iPhone blew a hole in it by mid-2007. I was writing in 2009; the bloody 3G was out then!
Damnit Netbook, you made a fool of me.
See also:
- Gordon's Notes: Making better predictions: 2011/03, a precursor to this mea culpa. BTW, I also predicted China's bubble would burst before 2012. Not much time left for that to happen ...