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Netbook wars continue in the midst of “consumer confusion”

As netbooks continue to steamroll the computing market, NPD's latest report …

Data source: NPD Group
Data source: NPD Group

As netbook sales continue to escalate out of sight, models and
manufacturers proliferate, and new platforms battle for supremacy in
the marketplace and in the minds of consumers and OEMs, analysts
continue to debate the suitability of netbook hardware to consumer
needs.  NPD's most recent report on netbooks purports
about netbooks, frustrated with their low performance, and typically
underuse their superb mobility. There are reasons for skepticism about
these results.



These numbers, taken as a whole, seem to imply that confused consumers are making the wrong choices and ending up with products unsuited to their needs. A report from another, less reputable firm in January concluded much the same thing, using a Web-dredging algorithm which sifted and parsed many thousands of online comments. We were skeptical about those results, and, for similar reasons, are skeptical about giving these results any deeper meaning.

netbook in bed.jpg

Consider the mobility result. At least 20% of netbook users purchased their netbooks primarily for mobility, but don't even take them out of the house. This sounds bad, but it's easy to forget how much mobility can matter even in the home setting. On the couch, netbook users can avoid the power cord, lap weight, and reproductive health threat of a full-sized laptop. In the kitchen, a recipe, webpage, or song can be accessed without tying up lots of counter space. And although we can think of a fair few uses for netbooks in the bedroom, the browsing behavior displayed by Flickr user bitospud (left) is probably the most common.

Moreover, the NPD survey probably overestimates the percentage of purchasers who were gung-ho road warriors. Given only two alternatives, price and mobility, it's probable that users who preferred long battery life or glamorous aesthetics would choose "mobility." Even some cost-conscious consumers may—like Geo Metro drivers who only drive one for the gas mileage, or people who read Playboy for the articles—have substituted a convenient motivation for the true one.

Much more troubling is the high rate of "same functionality" perception. If people actually think that netbooks can do everything that notebooks can, consumer confusion is indeed rampant. However, there's a pretty compelling interpretation which keeps netbooks' noses clean. If, by "same functionality," respondents mean not "equivalent performance" but "equivalent utility for my limited needs," then this statement may indeed be true for upwards of 60 percent of users. The mere fact that users were considering either a netbook or a notebook indicates the second statement is true to some extent. And certainly, with smaller keyboards and screens at lower resolutions, no one could think netbooks have the exact same functionality as notebooks.

It's difficult to attach any particular significance to the satisfaction figures, because we don't know how they compare to rates of satisfaction with other products like laptops and smartphones. The comparison between netbookers and cannibals is unsurprising, because cannibals were at least considering the notebook, and thus needed at least some of the performance or size features of a full-sized notebook. Netbookers, by contrast, are probably using the systems as they were intended to be used, as secondary and tertiary computers. Even if the difference in satisfaction rankings is of great import for cannibals, it's likely that netbookers are the vast majority of respondents; there has been evidence from other surveys that most netbook owners use their netbooks as secondary computers.

While these results may bode ill for a small minority of users who make genuinely wrong purchases based on drastic misconceptions, the overall picture is unchanged. Netbooks, as secondary computers and with some degree of cannibalization, are steamrolling the x86 market with unprecedented speed, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, precisely because they meet consumer needs.

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