The Missing Form Factor of Ultra-Portable

[slitchfield]

Apple's announcement of the ultra-thin, ultra-light MacBook Air yesterday has got Ewan both reminiscing about past attempts to do something similar and wondering what indeed users do want . Why does the concept of a small instant-on mini-laptop keep failing so miserably? Is there a (reasonably-priced) void between Nokia E90 and Dell laptop that needs filling?

Read on in the full article.

[dsthlm]

What about the Asus Eee? It's exactly what's descibed in the article, and it seems to be selling well in the countries where it's available. I think the ultraportables have to come down in price like the Eee to find a broader audience. That's increasingly possible with things like SSD and screens getting cheaper.

"Outside of small tech circles (that'll be Rafe, Steve and me), the idea of an ultra portable laptop, with around a 7-8” screen, solid state disks and true instant-on, is just not something that the public wants."

Huh? Asus sells 350k EEE pcs (7" screen, ssd, running fast booting linux os) in last quarter of 2007. 2008 expected 3-5 million sales. Also, EEE tops Amazon Xmas wish list.

[DrGlyndwr]

Poor show for missing the Eee PC out of your analysis, Ewan. I think there has always been demand for a 7-8 inch laptop with WiFi -- at the right price. Poor historical sales is because no-one has ever hit that price point until now.

I managed, after much fighting, to secure an Asus Eee PC as a Christmas present; Asus shipped hundreds of thousands of them and they were still hard to find becasue they were one of the hottest Christmas gifts -- they ended up selling 350,000 in Q407. They now expect to sell five million in 2008.

So, I disagree totally!

(added in edit) Damn, lots of faster typing people already said the same thing, ah well. At least I have links to back my argument up

++comments;

I can't wait to get my hands on an eeePC when they finally arrive here in Germany. I think I've been obsessed with it for a few weeks now, and it is indeed rare that I am willing to invest my gadget budget into something other than smartphones.

Perfect travelling companion for my N95 8GB. Small, portable, capable - I'm hooked.

[DevilsRejection]

yea Ewan I'm going to have to side with the rest of the folks here, the EEEPC has been selling like wild fire. people weren't interested in ultraportables before because they were costly.

make them cheap and they will come. the psion netbook and nokia internet tablets are not that popular because frankly for 500 USD you aren't getting enough value.

[Ewan]

Thanks for all your comments. I await the sales figures (as opposed to the shipped figures) for the Asus with interest, and if they can ramp up the production. It's relatively easy, in tech circles, to get hype and see a couple of hundred thousand of anything (witness the Apple TV) but to jump the chasm and become a mainstream adopted technology and factor is something else.

To my mind, the Asus has not yet made that leap beyond "tech toy." Ask me again in six months.

Asus eee PC outsold almost every UMPC in Q4 2007 lauch. I was one of the lucky people to locate one at the end of Oct.07 after using both JVC and OQO 01+. The idea of selling both units for eee PC is simply the form factor and price consideration. JVC and OQO both are brillant but JVC is far too slow and OQO is impossible to type and edit long Office doc.

In fact, eee PC works so well, I then sold my E90 for P1i. It works perfect with eee PC when my work demand is high and N800 when I browse around in Cafe. Its pity that Palm cancel their plan on Foleo which is a instant on 7 inch laptop. It would like as a dream if the price is right. E90 is still one of the best hybrid and possibly the closest all-in-one smartphone for end users but unfortunately slow-sell due to high price and form factor.

I really hope some Japanese or Korean companies will introduce their products over here in the UK quickly.

I think the air book is an excellent product. It's nothing more that it pretends to be, a laptop. OS-X is pretty efficient being UNIX-based and will do everything the average mobile computer-user needs. I am sure Apple will introduce MIMD's and UMPC's in time. No doubt they are working on it in secret. The iPhone's interface rocked and will do terrific for those hardware platforms if granted a near fullfledged OS-X version. The next step would be to have the iTouch extended with a harddisk like to iPod classic that carries 160G B and run a extend OS-X version with the touch-interface stepping to MIMD and then stepping up to a UMPC or perhaps down from the air book view.

Concerning mobility and size. I had a HP-200LX, swapped to a Palm Vx, got mobile phones, merged the organizer and mobile phone together in a P990. Became contented with T9 and outlook compatibility in my camera-phone w800i. It sufficed for PIM and reading e-mail to be honest. Got hooked on the photo camera though. Then BANG. the N95 came out with wifi, GPS, photo and video. More convergence... in a mobile package The thing is. All those devices could be carried in the environment I needed them. In my case meaning, they fitted on my belt or my backpocket.

- As such I consider a UMPC a replacement for the home PC, with a fullsized keyboard and monitor it becomes a real PC. Suitable for using on the couch or a cosy chair.
-As such the MIMD are a subclass, something small enough to take a way on a trip for a weekend or so. It fits in a back or jacketpocket. Turning with a keyboard into a modern typewriter.
- The smartphone is the ultramobile, socially acceptable to carry nearly every where.

As such there are some obvious predictions:

- I predict that bluetooth headsets will be merged into a mobile phone. Snap on snap off. Recharged from the mobile phone when snapped on.
- With increasing popularity of pocketsized MIMD. Features like photo, video and GPS might move from the mobile phone to the larger MIMD, improving camera quality and use-time. This will give space for the snap-in bluetooth headset. Video-calling however will stay in the mobile phone.
- With processors gaining dual power-modes. MIMD's will become a snap-into-UMPC.

Turning the mobile computer into a morphing device whose size depends on desired mobility and function. It is a logical variation on nature's invention to change shape depending on function. A bird wing's is a simple example. Depending on airspeed it shape changes. We will do well to listen to the wisdom of millions of years of development.

snoyt.vox.com

an ultra portable laptop, with around a 7-8” screen, solid state disks and true instant-on, is just not something that the public wants? They can't make the EEE PC fast enough to meet all the demand for it. Of course, much of this demand is a result of using the superior Linux operating system. The could have sold many times more at Christmas if they had the manufacturing in place.

The Nokia N810 is nice but it is still generally not in stores in Europe. The Nokia N800 does not have a keyboard. The Nokia E90 with a Psion Series 5mx keyboard would be nice, but it currently can not do tabbed browsing, the screen is undersized, keyboard space is wasted with the knobby thing, it does not run Linux, and the camera is sluggish.

Another option is the new Sony Mylo II which runs Qtopia Linux.

I would like to see an E90i with a bigger screen, smarter keyboard, better operating system (Linux) and faster camera. I would also like to see an E70i with a faster CPU. I would rather carry a spare battery and have a faster CPU because Nokia batteries are very small and CPU speeds tend to be low.

As far as the previous firmware E90 goes, they gave me a choice of Dutch or Romanian languages. I would also like to have the option of French and German, especially for a phone purchased in Belgium. That is not cool. I would also like to have the option of saving web pages with pictures. The Webkit browser is generally excellent and this would provide a workaround for the missing tabbed browsing feature. I know that tabbed browsing requires a lot of CPU power. That is why I am requesting a faster CPU.

Psion started building industrial handhelds. An industrial style E61i II with a bigger VGA screen is missing from the Nokia lineup. One-handed keyboard, oversized screen.

I would also like to see the GSM industry move towards prepaid flat rate GPRS data plans. 200+ Euros for 30 days of unlimited flat rate prepaid GPRS would be a bargain. Currently, Vodafone charges something like 10,000 Euros per kilboyte which means that the average Saudi prince can only surf for five minutes before running out of credit on his prepaid account.

[tomsky]

To my mind, the Asus has not yet made that leap beyond "tech toy." Ask me again in six months.

But the EEEPC can run windows xp, and I think this is where it gets really difficult to quantify what we mean when we start to talk about "one box or two?".

I notice lots of other people have piled on in, so I feel no shame in throwing in my 2p:

We all (I think...) have a desktop PC or a large laptop or something which is the focus of our computing at home. For most of the general public, that and a phone is enough. Then you get to people who want a gizmo to allow web access around the home, and various solutions have come and failed: web on tv - the tv needs to be shared; internet tablets - usually surprisingly expensive. I visit shared houses and see people sat in front of the television with a laptop, and it makes perfect sense, especially given how cheap laptops come these days.

Then you leave the house and it gets even more complicated. Do you take a laptop with all your data? Do you take only a mobile phone and search for computer facilities elsewhere? Internet cafes never really took off in the UK, so business-types take laptops with them, and they are the target market for the E90 and P1i, which delay the moment at which you whip out the laptop.

The interesting thing about the EEEPC is that it seems to be gaining traction where tablet pcs and more expensive ultra-portables failed, and its mainly due to the price. I spent £550 on a second hand tablet pc, and I have spent £350 on a second hand E90, but for £210 I can have an ultraportable computer - and there is the difference.

And then you come to the Mac Air, which is 5x the price of the EEE...

I think it all really comes down to the issue raised earlier in the week: battery threshold. I tend to be conservative with my phones battery life, but my laptop can run flat and I don't care.

i'd also like to add that very importantly the eeePC has been surrounded by large and pretty creative communities very very quickly, which I think will make it more than a tech toy on the long run.

[DrGlyndwr]

Originally Posted by Ewan

I await the sales figures (as opposed to the shipped figures) for the Asus with interest, and if they can ramp up the production.

Take it from someone who sweated over it -- they were hard to find in the UK for Christmas, and judging by the tirade of posts on eeeuser.com and the prices paid on Ebay, this was common in the US too. This would suggest sales figures were equal to shipment figures, would it not?

[krisse]

Very interesting article.

I think the one thing that is the absolute key to this is price. Too many computers (including Apple's announced laptop) are technically impressive but far too expensive. What people really seem to want is something like the $100 laptop, but computer companies are reluctant to make it because it would turn a high-profit low volume business into a low-profit high volume business. Instead of making computers like cars, they'd be making them like cartons of milk, and they'd have to work a lot harder to earn the same amount of money.

For those interested in the form factor topic, I'm currently working on a special feature for AAS comparing the E90 and... another device with a similar form factor. ;-)

[Dogmann]

Hi all

As someone that has been involved in Mobile Data since the early days and remembers well using both Toshiba 70ct and 110ct UltraPortable PC's with Ericsson GC25 data cards. My current E90 destroys those specs many times over. This year we should see the OMAP 3 chip starting to appear in our devices with speeds up to 1ghz and HSDPA already @3.6mbps.

All we really need IMO is 7.2mbps HSDPA or faster and cheap or free widely available WiFi as well as the long awaited projection technologies we have been promised for so long on something like an E90 and that will be all i need. The problem with UMPC'S and Ultra Portable Laptops is there size, now I'm not saying the E90 is small but it's small enough to be carried and used as a phone add to that form factor faster processors and projection technology and the huge increases in Memory cards and what do we really need a Ultra Potable Laptop or UMPC for. I think that is a solution that most of us would find an excellent size and performance solution, but who knows just what the future holds or just how fast we will get it.

Marc