The Future of Subnotebook Pricing

Corpuscavernosa recommends a story from InternetNews about the development of the subnotebook market. The author notes the beginnings of a trend toward selling the devices bundled with certain services rather than as standalone products. He notes two examples; a free Asus Eee PC with a broadband package, and another for opening a bank account. Quoting: "Soon, the market will be overwhelmed by what I like to call 'mini me too' laptops -- commodity Asus clones that will drive margins for all players toward zero. There will be no real money to be made in direct sales of cheap mini-notebooks to consumers. I'm predicting that the successful pricing model for 'mini me too' laptops will look nothing like the notebook pricing model (where you always pay full price for the hardware), and a lot like the cell phone pricing model where you buy a service, and the hardware is heavily subsidized or given away free."

Re:like cell phones...

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm not sure where in Europe you've been to but most people I know get their phone on a contract (hence the reason they complained about being able to unlock their phone after the contract) and the only people that buy phones are PAYG customers who buy cheap old models or people buying a cheap old model phone for their kid.

From my experience the biggest difference is in Europe you get decent phones for free on a contract where as it's more common to pay something for the phone *and* have a contract in the US.

Re:Why there are no economist billionaires.

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular belief, Sam Walton (the founder of Wal-Mart) was not from Arkansas. He was actually born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma on March 29, 1918. He was raised in Missouri where he worked in his father's store while attending school. He also was a college graduate (University of Missouri in 1940).

Re:Subnotebooks like Cell phone plans?

[KokorHekkus]

As I said, it's not for everyone but just using "average person" isn't good enough. Potential users are those who live outside cities where broadband isn't available but 3G is (not extremly uncommon here), people who live in more than one place (weekend commuters, people with summer cottages... there's one summer cottage for every two households in Sweden) and it's also useful for people who travel in work so they don't need to hassle their customers for net access or search for wifi.

And then we have the people who feel they want to be able to be online anywhere and everywhere. They don't need it but they want it and think it's worth paying something for.

They're not anywhere near a majority. But it all adds up to a sizeable market anyway.

Re:Calculator Redux?

[poetmatt]

Short answer: I would agree with you that we are.

Long answer:

The article is completely off with its "There will be no real money to be made in direct sales of cheap mini-notebooks to consumers. " statement. Tell that to every business who has taken a smaller per-item profit to dynamically increase revenue via volume.

It's the truth of all business and a continually evolving economy and the technology underlying: building something expensive, make it cheaper, sell tons, build something better to replace it.

Once this occurs and computers/laptops/asus eee equivalents get to be in the range of "absolutely anyone can afford one for a decent one", everyone will have one just like how everyone can afford a cellphone nowadays.

Re:Why there are no economist billionaires.

[tbradshaw]

George Soros