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Tablets are the darling of the industry. They are expected to grow at an average annual rate of 131% for the next five years, says IC Insights.
But hold on: What was the last industry darling?
Well that was netbooks which grew 185% in both 2008 and 2009.
And what is the projected annual average growth rate for netbooks for the next five years?
Answer: 7%
So much for the darlings of yesteryear – discarded and disregarded lie a . . . . .well I’ll leave that to you.
But the promise of the netbook was more than just a growth vehicle. The netbook promised to be the end to Wintel – that combination of an Intel processor and a Microsoft OS which has sucked out most of the profit from the computer industry these past 30 years.
Remember all those guys making ARM-based processors for netbooks – Nvidia, TI, Qualcomm, Freescale, Marvell, Uncle Tom Cobleigh?
Their penetration if the netbook space? Practically zilch.
Stuffed by Intel MDF.
Is the same fate going to happen to tablets?
Well the iPad – with 90% of the market – doesn’t use Wintel; the No.2 tablet player, Samsung uses a Qualcomm ARM-based processor; the likely No.3 player – Blackberry – will use an ARM based processor.
So can the tablet do what the netbook couldn’t?
Well, Intel has scented trouble ahead and, yesterday, created a new business unit that it calls the netbook and tablet group under Douglas Davis.
Will Intel MDF win the day again?
That’s very encouraging, Torben, thanks.
As with most such gadgets, software matters more than hardware. Wintel won the netbook race on software, not hardware (the Linux-based netbooks used the same hardware as the Windows noetbooks).
People were simply used to Windows and would choose this over Linux if the price difference was small — which it became after Microsoft extended the life of XP and gave attractive OEM licenses for netbooks).
It is different with tablets. Neither (standard) Windows nor most Linux distributions work well on tablets, and Apple has shown that you don’t need to run traditional Windows applications to make a successful tablet — they even managed without FLash, which was one of the issues that delayed ARM-based netbooks.
Microsoft may be able to get Windows Phone 7 onto tablets and Intel may be able to do the same with Meego, but since WP7 runs on ARM and Meego isn’t Microsoft, it will not be through an (unholy) alliance that Microsoft or Intel may dominate tablets.
So far, the clear winner is Apple. While some non-Apple tablets are decent, there is (according to reviews) still some way before the user experience is as good as on the iPad.
Also, battery time is more important for tablets than netbooks. The netbook form factor (in spite of beach girl commercials) almost implies that you sit down at a table to use it, and you will often have power when you do. A tablet is often used while standing or sitting in a couch, where power may not be as readily available. This means that ARM (in spite of Intel’s continuing efforts with Atom) still has an advantage over x86. Not only due to a leaner core, but also because the ARM SoCs are more integrated than Intel’s ditto, which reduces overall system power.
So the Intel MDF will have to work a lot harder to eliminate the competition in the tablet market.