14 DAY TRIAL // Back in the latter part of 2009, with the netbook hype beginning to stabilize and companies prospecting new types of consumer electronics, PC makers started to more seriously consider the idea of testing out smartbooks. This led to the development of such devices as Lenovo's Skylight, demonstrated at the 2010 international Consumer Electronics Show, and HP's Airlife, revealed in mid-February. Now, in the wake of the emergence of tablets and the slowed down but still growing netbook sales, the interest in these diminutive, foldable PCs seems to be diminishing, with Lenovo even deciding to delay the availability of the Skylight.
The portable electronic has a 10-inch screen with a maximum resolution of 1,024 x 600, 20GB of Flash storage, WiFi, 2GB of Lenovo cloud storage and an ARM CPU with a clock of 1GHz. The company was going to reveal the full set of specifications when actually releasing the mobile PC on the US market, namely this month. However, a report published by the Laptopmag website now suggests that it may take quite a while longer for the PC maker to finalize preparations, with the official announcement currently set for June.
“With any new product that we introduce, we owe it to our customers to get it right and we would rather take the little extra time that sometimes takes to finalize a product,” a statement by Lenovo published by the Laptopmag website reads.
Lenovo may be having second thoughts because, on the same market where the iPad and other slates are bound to make waves, a smartbook with inferior specifications and just a keyboard to make up for them does not have a very bright future. Not only that, but the Skylight also has a rather narrow software support, due to being ARM-based and running a special version of Linux.
The report states that the only market that Lenovo's product will reach before June, in May to be exact, is that of China.