14 DAY TRIAL // No doubt consumers have heard, at least to some extent, of the slowdown in netbook sales, but it seems that things are not too dire as of yet, as overall shipment levels might very well still be maintained this year.
Even with all the news about how tablets have hit netbooks hard, things have not yet become overly complicated as far as sales go.
While some minor suppliers of such machines did back out, the major players are still very much in the game.
In fact, some of them even said up front that they were not going to stop making netbooks any time soon, as was said to be the case with Acer.
Now, an even more recent report made by Digitimes states that 2011 won't show too great a decrease in netbook shipments, if any.
With regards to such entry-level mobile PCs, Intel expects to launch a new CPU soon, dubbed Atom N570, and is quite confident about its profitability.
Of course, considering that ASUS, Samsung and Lenoco all plan to release devices based on it as early as March, this thinking may very well be justified.
There is also AMD's Fusion platform, especially the Ontario C Series Brazos APU (accelerated processing unit), which should show up in ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung and HP mobile PCs as early as February.
The AMD machines will measure between 11.6 inches and 12 inches and will have prices of about US$599.
Meanwhile, various notebook vendors are supposedly being more cautious about the tablet market, since smartphones makers are also pushing in that area, so the former may end up focusing on netbook more than originally planned.
All in all, there will be plenty of new netbooks to go around and, if one is to believe the sources from notebook players that Digitmes cited, shipments will reach about 30 million by year's end.